September/October 2023

THE GENIUS OF GOLDA MEIR

THE YOM KIPPUR WAR: 50 YEARS LATER

OCTOBER IS GAUCHER AWARENESS MONTH

In the Ashkenazi Jewish population there are at least 19 times more cases of type 1 Gaucher disease than in the general population – that’s about one in every 600 Ashkenazi births.

Takeda recognizes the importance of raising the profile of this rare genetic condition to help people receive an earlier diagnosis.

WHAT IS GAUCHER DISEASE?

Gaucher — pronounced GO SHEY — disease is caused when waste materials that are usually broken down cannot be, and instead slowly accumulate in different organs. Over time, this causes damage that can lead to a range of symptoms.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?

Symptoms vary from person to person and can develop at any age.

Genetic screening can show you the risk of having Gaucher disease and is recommended if you are of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. It is often assumed that Gaucher disease is covered by standard screenings, but this is not always the case and specialized screening may be needed. Talk to your doctor if you think you have symptoms or to learn more about genetic screening.

“A

memoir about life as a writer in Hollywood which could only be told by someone who escaped.”

The only script you can really The only script you can really The only script you can really write in life is your own. write in life is your own. write in life is your own.

—Judd Apatow, producer of Girls and Bridesmaids and director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Photo:Maxwell Poth

360 Degrees of Healing is about much more than a building. It’s also about Israel’s children. Help keep the hearts of Israel’s most vulnerable patients beating strong.

With sustained support, the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Unit (PCCCU) in the Hadassah Heart Institute at Ein Kerem will be able to meet the demands of an ever-expanding patient base. Last year, the Unit admitted more than 700 patients, a 40 percent increase from the previous year. We expect to see 1,000 patients in the PCCCU by 2025. To accommodate this growing demand, more equipment, more staff-time, and more upkeep will be required to keep this indispensable unit running effectively. We are counting on you to help make this a reality for the children of Israel and the world beyond.

PEDIATRIC CARDIAC CRITICAL CARE UNIT (PCCCU)

16 WHEN GOLDA PULLED OFF THE IMPOSSIBLE

By Uri Kaufman

“Wars, Golda often said, should only be managed by people who hate them,” writes Kaufman in this adapted excerpt from his new book, Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East. “By that measure, she more than fit the bill. But that was seemingly her only qualification.”

22 GOLDA’S GENIUS

By Deborah E. Lipstadt

“She did not look like the young, tanned, open-collared, swaggering sabra who farmed and fought,” Ambassador Lipstadt writes in an excerpt from her recently published biography of Golda Meir that focuses on her 1948 pre-state trip to the United States to raise money for the War of Independence. “But she spoke in their name and demanded of American Jewry that they not abandon them. From that visit on, she occupied a special place in the hearts of American Jews. Nothing would wrest her from it.”

26 MY TORAH JOURNEY

By Rita Plush

Learning to read Hebrew comforted Plush in her darkest days. Her ease with the language grew as she recited Kaddish first for her mother and, later, after she tragically buried two of her three children. Her Hebrew quest culminated last year when she celebrated her 85th birthday by reading from the Torah in her synagogue in Queens, N.Y.

DEPARTMENTS

12 COMMENTARY

A love for Israel sealed 50 years ago

14 ESSAY War meant the end of innocence

30 HEALTH

Preventing falls

38 TRAVEL

A trip offers a glimpse of peace

42 FOOD

Adeena Sussman’s Shabbat

46 ARTS

• Israeli artists inspired by their Soviet roots

• Generations , a Jewish genealogy TV series

52 BOOKS

• On writing and witnessing My Friend Anne Frank

• James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Sukkot in Israel (CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM) ERIC SULTAN/THE LONKA PROJECT; GERSHON ELINSON/FLASH90; DAN PEREZ

War and Peace

Hadassah played a key role in the Yom Kippur War of 1973

By Rhoda Smolow

It’s been 50 years since egyptian forces, on one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, crossed the Suez Canal and overwhelmed the thinly spread Israeli forces on the other side. On that same day, the Syrian forces breached the cease-fire lines in the Golan Heights. The Yom Kippur War had begun. All Israelis and many Jews around the world alive at the time remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news of the attack. It was the greatest existential threat Israel ever faced, until then and until now.

If history is a road map showing us how we got to where we are today, the Yom Kippur War remains one of the most prominent junctions on the timeline of Israeli-Arab relations.

Six years earlier, during the SixDay War, Israel had wrested the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt along with the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. Conventional wisdom among Israeli leaders in 1973 was that Egypt—lacking air superiority—would not try to cross the canal and retake its lost territories. Hence the sparse Israeli presence on that front line.

But Egyptian President Anwar Sadat believed he didn’t need to win a war; he only needed to win one battle to boost Arab morale and shake up the status quo.

The war did indeed alter the status quo, eventually leading to a formal Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty—signed in 1979 by President Sadat, Israeli

Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Jimmy Carter—and the return of Sinai to Egypt. In 1981, a year before the Sinai return, Sadat was assassinated for having made peace with the Jewish state, but the treaty has held for more than 40 years. Israel has since established diplomatic relations with five additional Arab nations.

Peace with Egypt, Israel’s largest neighbor, played a crucial role in Israel’s subsequent economic development. But despite several attempts at negotiation, there has been no similar resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. Nonetheless, as we remain hopeful, Hadassah models coexistence. As is well-known, our medical center is an oasis of peace, with Jewish and Arab staff, patients and families mixing together daily in an atmosphere of respect and shared values.

Hadassah played a key role in the Yom Kippur War. Eighty percent of the doctors in Israel’s military field hospitals were graduates of the Hebrew UniversityHadassah School of Medicine. Within hours of the war’s outbreak, 95 of our hospital’s 250 staff physicians joined their army reserve units. During the war and its aftermath, 527 critically wounded soldiers were treated by the Hadassah Medical Organization; all but eight of them survived.

In recent years, our ethic of respect has been spreading throughout Israeli society, where Jewish, Muslim, Druze and Christian citizens interact with increasing regularity. In addition, HMO runs a program, now in its third year, for Israeli Arabs who want to take part in voluntary national service, Sherut Leumi. Many of those who participate have indicated that they want to pursue careers in health care, including nursing, among other fields, after their service ends.

Our history brought us to where we are. It is our obligation to learn from it and to honor those who gave their lives so that Israel and the Jewish people could survive and thrive. But let us also remember that we make history every day, history that our heirs will study. May our hope and our reality merge, and may 5784 become not only a year, but the year of peace.

A happy New Year to us all.

DURING THE WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH, 527 CRITICALLY WOUNDED SOLDIERS WERE TREATED BY THE HADASSAH MEDICAL ORGANIZATION; ALL BUT EIGHT OF THEM SURVIVED.

Hadassah & You Together in Israel

A WONDERFUL MULTIGENERATIONAL EXPERIENCE

Strengthen your family’s ties and create lasting memories on the Hadassah Winter Family Tour to Israel.

Ride a camel in the desert, dig up ancient remains, tour the Golan Heights in a jeep, compete in a hummusmaking contest, watch the Tower of David sound and light show, see Hadassah’s work at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and Meir Shfeyah Youth Village and much more. Do it all together with your family!

December 21–31

Tour led by Hadassah leader Carol Rosenthal

Book by Sept. 22 to save $600!

Learn more at go.hadassah.org/familytour

MORE TOURS TAKING PLACE DURING OUR YEARLONG CELEBRATION OF HADASSAH & ISRAEL — TOGETHER AT 75:

ISRAEL TOGETHER: MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS & FRIENDS

Led by Ellen Hershkin & Lisa Hershkin Roth | October 24–November 3

ISRAELI CULTURAL CURIOSITY MUSIC, ART & CUISINE

Led by Peg Elefant & Valerie Lowenstein | November 5–15

KEEPERS OF THE GATE TOUR TO ISRAEL

Led by Linda Freedman Block & Roz Kantor | December 10–19

JEWISH HERITAGE ADVENTURE IN MOROCCO & PURIM IN JERUSALEM

Led by Rhoda Smolow & Ellen Hershkin | March 14–27, 2024

CHAIR Marlene Post

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lisa Hostein

DEPUTY EDITOR Libby Barnea

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DIGITAL EDITOR Arielle Kaplan

EDITOR EMERITUS Alan M. Tigay

DESIGN/PRODUCTION Regina and Samantha Marsh

Roselyn Bell

Ruth G. Cole

Nancy Falchuk

Gloria Goldreich

Blu Greenberg

Dara Horn

A Time to Reflect

We can’t take the Jewish state for granted | By Lisa Hostein

EDITORIAL BOARD

Ruth B Hurwitz

Francine Klagsbrun

Anne Lapidus Lerner

Curt Leviant

Joy Levitt

Bonnie Lipton

Marcie Natan

Nessa Rapoport

Sima Schuster

Susan S. Smirnoff

Barbara Topol

HADASSAH NATIONAL PRESIDENT Rhoda Smolow

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It’s likely nothing more than a coincidence that a new biography of Golda Meir has been published so close to Yom Kippur, when this year, in addition to the usual solemnity surrounding the Day of Atonement, we observe the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.

This confluence of dates gives us the opportunity to reflect on Israel’s fourth prime minister and her leadership during that fateful 1973 war, as Uri Kaufman writes in “When Golda Pulled Off the Impossible” (page 16). The new biography, written by Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt and excerpted in “Golda’s Genius (page 22),” also opens a window into the relationship she had forged decades earlier with American Jewry, even before the State of Israel was born.

It’s not just the military and political aspects of that decisive war that we remember. The recollections of Rabbi Dayle Friedman, then a young exchange student in Haifa (page 12), and of Galia Miller Sprung, a relatively recent immigrant and new mother (page 14), illustrate the longterm impact the war had on so many.

The focus on the Yom Kippur War, when Israel’s survival hung in the balance, serves as an important reminder during the current crisis and divisiveness engulfing Israel that we can’t take the Jewish state for granted. What kind of country Israel should be is the real question that everyone—Israelis and Zionists around the world—on all sides of the debate surrounding judicial reform and other legislative measures is asking. The time of year is ripe for us to reflect

and, in the words of Israeli journalist David Horovitz, to pray for sanity to “reassert itself” (page 64).

Also in the spirit of the High Holidays, we share Rita Plush’s “My Torah Journey,” capturing the season’s themes of loss, memory and spiritual connection (page 26).

And just in time for Rosh Hashanah, which begins the evening of September 15 and coincides with Shabbat, our own Adeena Sussman shares the story—and recipes— behind her brand-new cookbook, Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Kitchen to Yours (page 42). Plus, don’t miss our roundup of spirituality-themed books (page 53) and Rosh Hashanah clues galore in the crossword puzzle (page 51).

On the health front, check out tips on how to prevent falls (page 30) and read about the frontline technological tools that are transforming health care at Hadassah Medical Organization’s Organoid Center (page 32).

Elsewhere, you’ll find plenty of enlightening reads, including one writer’s unusual experience traveling through Israel and the Palestinian Territories (page 38); a portrait of female Israeli artists with roots in the former Soviet Union (page 46); and the story behind a new memoir, My Friend Anne Frank (page 52).

Lastly, we include our annual tribute—and heartfelt thank you—to the generous donors to our Hadassah Magazine Circle (page 28).

On behalf of the whole Hadassah Magazine team, I wish you a Shanah Tovah—a healthy and sweet New Year!

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IT’S A BARBIE WORLD

I was excited to read “Barbie’s Jewish Mother” in the July/August 2023 issue but was disappointed that Ruth Handler’s other successful business venture was not mentioned. Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy in 1970. She couldn’t find comfortable breast prosthetics at that time, and with a partner, started a new company called Nearly Me that manufactured breast forms that fit properly. That company is still going strong. It is also worth noting that Handler was convicted of producing fraudulent financial statements. She resigned from Mattel, paid a hefty fine and served thousands of hours of community service.

Deborah Markowitz San Clemente, Calif.

My youngest sister, Adrian Leeds, received her first Barbie when she was about 6 years old, just as the dolls were introduced. She proceeded to create a wardrobe of clothes for her Barbie. This later inspired her to attend the Fashion Institute of Design.      After graduation, Adrian spent a year in Israel working on a kibbutz.  Since 1994, she has resided in Paris, where she has become a celebrity on the HGTV series House Hunters International. But her whole career path was determined by her Barbie doll and the inspiration it gave her to create and dream big!

Lee Blotner Metairie, La.

Barbie’s long legs, large bust, long blond hair and lots of clothes—excluding the dolls representing such women as Sally Ride—teach little girls that this is the sine qua non of

beauty. I do not know whether to be amused or appalled at the celebration of Barbie. It is just as appalling as giving little girls baby dolls because, for my generation, that was our circumscribed goal.

Stephanie Digby Saint Paul, Minn.

QUESTIONING CHANGE

Despite Anita Diamant’s argument in her commentary in the July/August issue that “Things change. Which is a good thing,” our survival for millennia as Jews rests on those who follow Torah values and accept Maimonides’ 13 Principles of Faith. Traditional Jews cannot accept same-sex marriage, fluid gender and pronouns, and interfaith marriage.

Only 25 percent of American Jews belong to any synagogue. American rabbis are bewildered because Jews who relied on Zoom during the pandemic now refuse to return to the synagogue. With an almost 75 percent intermarriage rate among American Jews, how can Diamant call change a good thing?

Gary S. Laveman Livingston, N.J.

CAMP MEMORIES

Hadassah Magazine is always full of interesting articles—and sometimes wonderful surprises. When reading “ ‘Leftovers’ Maven Tamar Adler” in the July/August issue, I was shocked to see Sam Kadison’s name and discover Adler’s family connection to Camp Modin in Maine, where I spent three wonderful summers in the 1960s.

At Modin, we put on Broadway

shows, climbed mountains, took canoe trips and benefited from the cultural enrichment of visiting artists.  I watched the moon landing in 1969 on a fuzzy black-and-white television in the dining hall. And there was always singing and delicious challah.

Thanks for this unexpected blast from the past!

Betsy L. Barr Somerville MA

TIKTOK AS THREAT?

I was surprised to see “The Incredible Rise of #JewishTikTok” in the July/ August issue and was appalled that Hadassah Magazine touted the app as a vehicle for outreach by Jewish women—and held a virtual event on the topic.

According to the Center for Internet Security, TikTok is required by law to turn certain user data over to the Chinese government if asked to do so. A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that a majority of Americans see TikTok as a threat to national security, and TikTok is now lobbying Congress to counter that image.

Deborah Diamond Fairfax, Va.

MORE ON NEOLOGS

In the July/August story “Jewish Heritage Along the Danube,” the builders of the Dohany Street Synagogue are identified as Neologs, “a Hungarian Reform group.” The Neolog tradition is a non-Orthodox but

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Please email letters to the editor to letters@hadassah.org. To read more letters, visit us online at hadassahmagazine.org.

halachic movement, not affiliated with the German Reform movement. A Hungarian Neolog rabbi, Alexander Kohut, was the co-founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, the center of Conservative Judaism.

George Alexander Hamden, Conn.

EATING IN TRANSLATION

The colorful photo of a salad-laden dining table that accompanied “Defining the Israeli Kitchen” (May/ June 2023 issue) reminded me of a meal we had in Kfar Saba about 15 years ago. We were a group of 12 people, and the restaurant served us about 40 of the salads like those in

the photo. Not one salad had a serving spoon, as per Israeli custom, but alien to the three Americans at the table. I asked my cousin to request serving spoons from the waitress, who looked at her like she was from Mars, and asked why we wanted spoons. To which my cousin said, in Hebrew, “Americanim.”

Adrienne Fishman Boynton Beach, Fla.

CORNERS OF OPINION

Thank you, Rhoda Smolow, for the May/June column “A Unity of Purpose, Not of Opinion”—a quote that could apply to all Americans as well as Hadassah members.

Here in Los Alamos, N.M., our

Hadassah chapter was formally founded in 1947, but local Jewish women had already been sending support to Palestine for a number of years.

About a year ago, our formerly engaged and active chapter, like so many other venerable groups, melted away. The grand old founders of Los Alamos Hadassah had died off. Women under 40 (O.K., 60) weren’t joining.

But I believe another issue that broke us apart is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We seemed to have forgotten our unity of purpose and instead backed into our corners of opinion.

Jody Benson Los Alamos, N.M.

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“I chose to step up and increase my Keepers gift, designated to Hadassah and its projects, after going to Israel a few months ago and seeing the impact we have made and continue to make.”

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— Hadassah National Treasurer Michelle Hubertus, Short Hills, NJ

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— Shoshana Simones, Phoenix, AZ

Namesake, Aunt and Inspiration

In 2020, Rebecca Gratz was newly in addiction recovery when she visited a Louisville, Ky., library with companions from her treatment program. While chatting with friends, she looked down and realized that her hand was touching a book bearing her own name. It was a volume of some of the collected letters of Rebecca Gratz, the groundbreaking 19th-century philanthropist and educator whose influential Jewish American family had funded the establishment, among other things, of Philadelphia’s Gratz College, the first independent college of Jewish studies in North America.

“The fabric of my life changed when I found those letters,” recalled Gratz. Growing up Christian in Lexington, Ky., she’d been told only that she was named for a noteworthy relative. But she knew nothing of her family’s Jewish heritage, let alone that her namesake, a greatgreat-great-great aunt, created the model for America’s Jewish Sunday school movement.

That serendipitous discovery of the volume imbued in Gratz a resolve to be more like her stalwart namesake: She is now three years sober, is pursuing a career in technology—

and has mastered challah baking.

In June, Gratz journeyed to Philadelphia to promote the launch of the Rebecca Gratz Digital Collection, Gratz College’s online archive of letters, receipts and other documents assembled from various institutions that reveal the private life of the Jewish feminist pioneer.

Nina Warnke, the collection’s lead editor, said Gratz’s writings are distinguished by their unusual span—65 years, from adolescence into her 80s—as well as their insights into 19th-century American womanhood. Gratz’s day-to-day musings “open up a world,” Warnke said, from commentary on the latest Sir Walter Scott novel to describing the perpetual fear that women might die in childbirth.

Indeed, anxiety around health is “a persistent theme,” Warnke noted. With frequent epidemics like yellow fever, Gratz and her correspondents “talked about whether they should move to the country, reassured each other about who was safe.” Letters weren’t just a nicety, Warnke added. They were “vital communication in an era before mass media.”

Over the past year, Warnke and her colleagues have transcribed about 100 of the nearly 800 handwritten documents, thereby allowing people not only to read them but also to search the material by keywords. At the Rebecca Gratz Tea Party celebrating the collection’s debut, Warnke said she hoped to recruit volunteer transcribers to complete the project.

For her part, the modern-day Rebecca Gratz took a DNA test to confirm the connection before touring Gratz family sites around Philadelphia, including Mikveh Israel Synagogue, where the Gratzes worshiped, and the Rosenbach Museum, which houses a por trait of her namesake.

Moved by “the kindness, the welcome and the genius of the Jewish community,” Gratz said, “I kept thinking: ‘Rebecca, are you watching what’s going on?’ She would have been so glad that her effort and legacy are being main tained with such passion and care.” —Hilary Danailova

St. Thomas, Finding ‘the Presence of History and God’

A Caribbean synagogue with a storied Jewish past continues to make history as it welcomes its first female rabbi.

Julia Margolis, whose mother, Elena Rubinstein, became Israel’s first Russianspeaking female rabbi in 2002, moved to the United States Virgin Islands in February to lead the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas, which is affiliated with the Reform movement. The synagogue, constructed in 1833 in Charlotte Amalie, is one of only five synagogues worldwide with sand floors, a relic of its Sephardi past in which Jews fleeing the Inquisition sought to muffle the sounds of their prayers.

Born in Moscow, Margolis made aliyah at age 12 with her family.

Based in South Africa since 2009, she received ordination from Abraham Geiger College in Berlin before founding Beit Luria, a Reform synagogue in Johannesburg, in 2016. She continues to lead that congregation via monthly Zoom services while she lives in St.

On

Rabbi Julia Margolis

Modern-day Rebecca Gratz

19th-century Rebecca Gratz—and one of her letters to her brother Ben

Thomas with her two daughters, Emily and Victoria. Her husband, Greg, passed away in 2021.

What brought her to St. Thomas? “My heart and my soul,” she said. The synagogue “just takes your breath away. It was very, very meaningful to feel the presence of history and God in one unique place.”

Among the rabbi’s goals is “to engage with different interfaith groups,” Margolis said, and she wants intermarried families to “feel that they are welcome at the synagogue.”

Determining the number of Jews in St. Thomas is difficult since many spend part of the year elsewhere. Margolis said there are 70 member families on the island. While there is no formal religious school, b’nei mitzvah of both local and visiting children are celebrated regularly, as are destination weddings for tourists. For adults, the congregation offers Bible studies, weekly Torah portion discussions and oneg Shabbats, communal dinners and seders.

Margolis remains optimistic about the future. “This place is going to thrive,” she said, because of people who “see the importance of this historical synagogue. They see the importance of teaching our next generation.”

Lori Silberman Brauner

Saving the World’s Bee Population

Apples dipped in honey, a cherished Rosh Hashanah custom, symbolize the wish for a sweet year ahead. But we would have neither apples nor honey without bees.

As bees collect nectar from flowers (including apple blossoms) to turn into honey, pollen sticks to their bodies and rubs off on other flowers—a passive and utterly essential pollination process responsible for a third of our food supply.

However, bees now face an existential struggle against threats caused by climate change and other factors. Israeli beekeeper Eliyah Radzyner decided to address this problem with a high-tech hive innovation. He founded Beewise technologies with serial entrepreneur Saar Safra in 2018.

The Israeli company’s award-winning autonomous BeeHome, whose 8 foot- by 6.5 foot- by 6.5 foot-frame is powered by solar energy, uses artificial intelligence, computer vision and precision robotics to monitor and optimally control conditions for 24 bee colonies per unit.

Large commercial beekeepers in North America—the only region in which the units

have been deployed outside of Israel, though expansion plans are in the works—report that BeeHomes have reduced bee mortality by 80 percent, resulting in doubled honey yields. BeeHomes, with their climate- and pest-control sensors and automated harvesting, also solve a severe agricultural labor shortage by reducing manual labor needed for traditional apiaries by about 90 percent. The only human tasks are replenishing the water and food dispensers and collecting the honey when Beewise’s app sends an alert that the 100-gallon container is full. Beewise has brought in about $120 million in investments from funders across the globe—from Tel Aviv to New York City to Abu Dhabi.

In February, Beewise released its newest model unit, the smaller, lighter BeeHome 4. These thermally regulated units better protect colonies from fire, flooding and deadly Asian wasps.

“We’ve listened to beekeepers and growers, and BeeHome 4 is the culmination of their feedback,” said Safra. “Saving bees requires significant technology addressing the root issue: the adverse effects of global warming and urbanization on the bee population. The newly released BeeHome 4 makes significant strides toward the mission of saving the world’s bees.”

—Jordana Benami

Beewise’s solar-powered BeeHome

The St. Thomas synagogue

MICHAEL DEFREITAS CARIBBEAN/ALAMY (BELOW); COURTESY OF RABBI JULIA MARGOLIS

SHUTTERSTOCK (TOP); COURTESY OF BEEWISE

On Yom Kippur It Was Sealed

How the 1973 war cemented my relationship with Israel |

In the high holiday prayer

U’Netaneh Tokef, we say, “On Rosh Hashanah it is written; on Yom Kippur it is sealed.” There are moments in our lives that set the course for all that lies ahead. A critical element of my fate was sealed one Yom Kippur 50 years ago.

I was living in Haifa with an Israeli family as part of a high school exchange program. My “sister,” Avital, and I, both 17 years old, were walking home from Yom Kippur services. We were surprised to encounter a stream of cars urgently rushing past us. When we had walked to shul that morning, the streets had been deserted.

We soon learned that Israel had just been attacked by Syria and Egypt. The cars we saw were neighbors and friends reporting for military duty. When Avital and I returned home, we helped to cover all the windows and clean out our apartment building’s bomb shelter for what would be many long stays over the coming days. I was in shock, along with everyone around me.

During those 18 days of the Yom Kippur War, five decades ago, I was sealed into a deep and life-altering relationship with the land, people and State of Israel.

I was raised in a committed Reform home in Denver, Colo. Other than a family vacation a couple of years before, though, I had no relationship at all to the Jewish state. After 10 days of driving from site to site in an air-conditioned Mercedes on that first trip, I felt no special bond. I figured I’d seen Israel and would likely never return.

By Rabbi Dayle Friedman

I’d planned to spend a year of high school as an exchange student in Switzerland, where I would study, ski and use the German I was learning. That changed with the terrorists’ murder of 13 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Watching on television as Jews were slaughtered just because they were Jews, I lost any taste for the German language and culture.

I still wanted to study abroad, and instead chose what was then the Reform movement’s Eisendrath International Exchange (EIE) program in Israel. Armed with almost no Hebrew but lots of curiosity, I set off in the summer of 1973 with 30-plus other teens. In our summer ulpan in the Ben Shemen Youth Village, I fell madly in love with Hebrew. Learning Hebrew felt like uncovering my soul’s language.

After several weeks at the ulpan, my friends and I dispersed to Israeli families across the country who would host us for the next four months. I moved in with my Israeli family in Haifa before starting the school year. My adopted parents, Yehuda and Ahuva, and Avital immediately embraced me; my younger “brother,” Lavi, tolerated me. The parents invited me to call them “Abba” (Dad) and “Ima” (Mom). They introduced me to their sprawling extended family. They brought me to the beach, where Abba swam every day after work. In no time at all, I felt at home.

Just a month after joining the family, war broke out. We were running

back and forth to our cramped basement bomb shelter every time the air raid sirens went off. Crouched on mattresses on the cement floor, we were glued to the radio, hoping for any scrap of news. With the onset of war, I no longer felt like an outsider. My people had been attacked; we were called on to respond as best we could.

I was amazed that Israelis’ first impulse was to pitch in, even as they experienced danger and fear. When Avital and I set out to find volunteer work in the city, all the jobs were already taken. Still, we managed to make ourselves useful. We entertained kids in the bomb shelter of our apartment building and worked at a day care center. Eventually, we found a job with the local post office delivering postcards from soldiers.

Every time I brought a postcard to a parent, wife or child of a soldier, I witnessed unrestrained joy—the message meant that, at least for the moment, their loved one was safe. Many were not so lucky. In a country as small as Israel, the toll of more than 2,600 deaths and 7,500 wounded was incalculable—nearly everyone lost someone close.

At the outset of the war, I wrote to my concerned parents back home that they had nothing to worry about. Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had everything in hand. We were safe, or so I thought.

Abba was called up for reserve duty delivering supplies to troops in the Golan Heights. On his first leave, he brought home hand-painted ceramic dishes and grapes. He told

us he’d “gotten” these items from the kitchen table of a Syrian family who’d fled the advancing Israeli army. With the chutzpah only a teenager can muster, I challenged, “How could you take booty? I thought the Israeli army was the most moral in the world!”

Abba proceeded to lecture me: “You don’t understand. Human

beings will do anything if given a chance.” It took me decades to understand. He had once been an idealistic youth like me. But after being orphaned in the Shoah, coming to Israel as a teenager and fighting in three wars, all optimism had been knocked out of him. He wanted to make sure I understood: Israel was not a fairy tale.

On yom kippur it was sealed. From 1973 on, my life would forever be bound up with Israel. I would return to the country for a year of college and would visit dozens of times after that.

I had come to love Israel and its complex and imperfect society. Decades of occupation, war and the current assault on the fundamental

institutions of democracy have only increased the gap between Israel’s founding ideals and reality. Still, I continue to balance my faith in the country with support for those who fight on the ground for those values. Among them is my eldest daughter, Anya, who made aliyah six years ago with the Zionist youth movement Habonim-Dror to work for a just and peaceful Jewish state.

Rabbi Dayle Friedman offers counseling and spiritual direction to rabbis and to people facing the challenges of aging. Her books include Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older: Finding Your Grit and Grace Beyond Midlife

A member of the International Council of the New Israel Fund, she is currently working with friends to organize a virtual reunion of her Eisendrath International Exchange group.

The author’s wartime experience in Israel made the news in her native Colorado.

The End of My Naïveté

A young mother sidelined in her own fog of war |

It was yom kippur, october 1973. Three years since I had moved to Israel. I was sitting in front of my in-laws’ house in Kfar Vitkin with my baby daughter, Sarit, enjoying the fragrance of the guavas growing nearby and the calm that comes with the absence of the clatter of everyday life. As I was changing Sarit’s diaper, I jumped when two fighter jets screamed overhead, so low I could smell the fumes.

Pilots often buzzed their neighborhoods to “give regards” to their families—but on Yom Kippur?

In the house, Meir, my husband’s eldest brother, was on the phone. On Yom Kippur? When he hung up, he turned to us and said, “I guess there’s going to be a war.”

Yossi, the middle brother, had called to report that military vehicles were whizzing by on the coastal road bordering his moshav, Beit Herut, only a few miles from Kfar Vitkin.

I looked at my husband, Avramik. After fielding a call from the manager of our moshav, Petza’el, he was preparing to return to our home near the Jordanian border. It wasn’t clear at the time if he would stay to protect the moshav or join his reserve unit (he ended up with his unit). He took the M16 rifle that he always had with him and started for the door.

I remained with my in-laws on their moshav near Netanya, where we waited for television and radio outlets to report the

By Galia Miller Sprung

news once their personnel, who had been home for the holiday, reached the stations. Israelis were strong and invincible and always on alert. I wasn’t afraid.

We heard on the news that Syrian forces had broken through to the Golan Heights and Egyptian troops had crossed the Suez Canal and destroyed our first line of defense. My moshav neighbor and close friend, Ezra Katzav, was doing his annual reserve duty near the canal. “Regards to the Egyptians,” I had told him as he left for the canal a few days earlier. That’s how Israelis joked back then. Now I was haunted by the fear that he was either dead or captured.

We prayed that Jordan would not join the war, opening another front and putting our moshav in immediate danger. Of the 18 men who lived in Petza’el, only three remained to help manage the farm and operate our defense. The moshav needed me,

but I was stuck at my in-laws’ home. Finally, one of the members, Haim, came to get Sarit and me.

We were on alert as we drove through Tulkarem and Nablus, Arab towns where I would often stop for pita and hummus, but which were now seen as potentially hostile. Nevertheless, nothing I saw on the drive indicated war—until I arrived at Petza’el. It had become more an army base than a moshav: Soldiers in camouflage, tents, trucks and armored personnel carriers had moved in.

Our bomb shelters were readied, their doors unchained, floors swept, and blankets and medical supplies stocked. Women traded off day care duty and working in the fields and kitchen. I didn’t care what I did. I needed to be useful.

On the morning of Simchat Torah, I awoke to joyous singing. Soldiers were dancing with Torah scrolls, lifting them high above their heads as they wound their way around their tents and past our buildings. Here on our ridge above the Jordan Rift Valley, after almost two weeks of war and separation from their families, these soldiers, observant and nonobservant, took a moment to celebrate the completion of the annual cycle of Torah reading.

The author with her daughter, Sarit, in November 1973; moshav friend Ezra Katz, who was killed in the war

The joy was short-lived. The war was not yet over and the following week, an unfamiliar car entered the moshav. Two men and a woman wearing military uniforms got out and walked toward the office, where I was working. Had I any experience in wars, I would have run the other way and not looked them in the eye. But I welcomed them and offered cold water.

“We’re looking for the nurse,” the woman said.

I watched as our nurse led them down the path toward our living quarters. The faces of some women with more experience than I—wives, sisters and daughters to someone on active duty—darkened when they spied the trio.

Roni, whose husband was fighting in the South, screamed at them to go away. She refused to open her door, because until she did, her husband was still alive. But he wasn’t. Pini Ron was killed in Egypt on October 22, just days before a cease-fire went into effect. Roni was barely three months pregnant.

My fears about Ezra came true. He was buried in a military ceremony on March 5, 1974, once his remains had been located several months after the war. Ezra’s funeral and the more than 2,600 like it ushered in a new era for Israel, one of turmoil, mass protests and the resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir.

It also ushered in the end of my naïveté. The blind trust that I had had in Israel’s leaders was gone, while my determination to build up the moshav and raise my family there was strengthened.

Galia Miller Sprung moved to Israel in 1970. She was a founding member of Moshav Petza’el in the Jordan Rift Valley, where she lived for 10 years. She now resides in Tzufim and is writing a memoir of her moshav years.

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As Israelis rejoice in the sound of the shofar, we’re also preparing for the wail of the siren.

When Golda Pulled Off the Impossible

Israel’s Yom Kippur War victory was far from certain

By Uri Kaufman

On october 6, 1973, as Israelis throughout the country marked the Yom Kippur holiday swaying in prayer, Prime Minister Golda Meir sat with her cabinet, dazed, chain-smoking and trying to comprehend what she had just been told.

The Arabs were about to attack, there were hardly any Israeli soldiers in the field to stop them, and the army could not be mobilized for another 48 hours. Golda suggested to her ministers that they convene later

that day—and was cut off in mid-sentence by the wailing of sirens. She turned to her stenographer.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It would appear the war has begun,” the woman replied.

“Nar das felt min oys,” Golda muttered in Yiddish. “This is just what my life was missing.”

Wars, Golda often said, should only be managed by people who hate them. By that measure, she more than fit the bill. But that was seemingly her only qualification. Though she was

the first woman in the history of the world to rise to become a head of state without being related to any male politician or king, she was also the first—and to this day, only— Israeli prime minister to never have served in uniform or in Israel’s defense ministry. She believed her generals when they told her there would be no war. She believed them when they told her there was no need to mobilize the army.

Fortunately for the Jewish state, she proved a quick study. The massive

intelligence failure resulted in the war beginning about as badly as any war could. Israel’s defensive line along the Suez Canal crumbled, while the Syrians penetrated deeply into the Golan Heights.

Worst of all were the human casualties and the massive loss of planes and tanks during the first three days of fighting. Golda was horrified to learn that at the current rate of destruction, the nation would soon succumb to the tyranny of arithmetic. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan— the very symbol of Israel’s fighting spirit—was heard to murmur that “the Third Temple is at risk.”

But Golda kept her cool. When Dayan suggested readying nuclear weapons, she looked at him dismissively and said, “Forget about it.” She then sent the last division Israel had to the Golan Heights rather than hold it back to defend against a potential attack from Jordan.

For two nerve-shattering weeks,

Jerusalem sat undefended, naked to attack. Jordanian combat engineers were spotted along the Jordan River mapping potential crossing points, but King Hussein left the border quiet, as Golda had predicted. And the division sent north turned the tide of battle and pushed the Syrians back to their original lines.

In the South, Dayan advised pulling back to the more easily defensible Mitla and Gidi Passes. The move would stem the loss of men and materiel. But it meant giving up any hope of crossing the Suez Canal and defeating the Egyptians. Golda overruled Dayan and ordered the army to dig in and fight. The line held, the losses eased and the army remained within striking distance of the canal.

To the shortage of men and weaponry was added a new problem: a shortage of time.

On October 10, the Israelis learned that the Soviets, who had allied with the Arabs, were planning to propose a cease-fire in the United Nations. Golda knew that once the fighting ended, she needed bargaining chips to trade at the negotiating table. And so, in what those present described as one of the most difficult decisions of the war, she sent her battered army on a counterattack into Syria. Her generals scraped together what they could and conquered a bulge that left the outskirts of Damascus within artillery range.

The war was far from over. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat turned down the cease-fire proposal, and Golda had to decide whether to go for broke and attempt to cross the canal. An army group set loose west of the canal could potentially win the war. But Dayan cautioned in a climactic meeting on October 12 that if the attack failed and a large force was lost west of the canal, they might find themselves “fighting on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.” With the tension as thick as the cigarette smoke

Davening and Duty Soldiers in the Golan Heights observed Sukkot during the war; (opposite page) Golda Meir and her cabinet listened to Israel Defense Forces Gen. Shmuel Gonen (standing, right).

Metal silhouettes of soldiers atop Mount Bental in the Golan Heights commemorate the war.

blanketing the room, Golda and her generals received word from Israel’s master spy, an officer in the Egyptian army: Sadat was planning a massive offensive. When the Egyptians attacked on October 14, the Israelis were waiting for them. In one of the largest tank battles in history, the Israelis lit up the battlefield, destroying 250 tanks while losing only six.

In a head-spinning, spectacular throw of the dice, Golda then instructed her generals to cross the canal. The Israelis only had 650 tanks holding the line; they would send 400 of them across the canal. Even with all that equipment, the Egyptians still

possessed a lopsided advantage in personnel and materiel.

And that was assuming the Israelis could even cross the canal. Doing so required moving a 450-ton “rolling bridge” down a narrow road defended by thousands of dug-in Egyptian troops. The man given the task of getting the army over the canal was Ariel Sharon, a swashbuckling, insubordinate general whose superiors had twice recommended relieving him of command.

Fortunately for Israel, he lasted in his job long enough to ignore his orders one last time. On this occasion, he was told to sit tight west of the canal with a small vanguard that had paddled across in rubber boats and do nothing until the rolling bridge was laid. Instead, in an unauthorized assault, he ordered his tiny force to attack north along the west bank of the canal. The Egyptians east of the canal saw the advancing Israelis through binoculars, grew alarmed that they were being surrounded, and pulled back further north to shorten their lines. The Egyptian retreat east

wanted to rescue their Arab allies. Now the Americans wanted a ceasefire, too.

On october 20, kissinger learned that the Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries had imposed an oil embargo on the United States and other nations in retaliation for their support of Israel during the war. The CEOs of America’s oil companies informed him that while World War II rationing had reduced oil supplies to American consumers by 6 percent, the embargo threatened to reduce it by 18 percent.

The cease-fire was declared in the United Nations Security Council on October 22. Golda told her generals to ignore it and encircle the Egyptian Third Army. The Soviets were irate. Using unusually strong language, they warned ominously “of the gravest consequences” for Israel. They also hinted at sending in troops, and thereby sparked the most dangerous superpower confrontation since the

MOSHE MILNER/ISRAEL GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE (BOTTOM); ABACA PRESS/ALAMY

Southern Front Gen. Ariel Sharon (left) directed the crossing of the Suez Canal during the war; a month later, a reservist guarded the then quieter canal.

meet Kissinger for one of the most acrimonious meetings ever between an Israeli prime minister and an American secretary of state. To Golda’s protests he responded, “You’re only three million. It is not the first time in the history of the Jews that unjust things have happened.”

Talks dragged on in Washington for days, with Kissinger shuttling between the State Department, where he met with an Egyptian envoy, and the Blair House, where he met with Golda. The Egyptians were adamant that Israel had to pull back to the October 22 cease-fire line and release the grip on their Third Army. Golda refused. Israeli soldiers would stay put. They would allow supply of the Egyptian army, but only if POWs were exchanged. No withdrawal would take place without an agreement on Israel’s terms.

On November 3, Kissinger lost patience. “You will have a hell of a time,” he said, “explaining to the American people how we can have an oil shortage over the issue of your

right to hold territory you took after the cease-fire.”

Washington had supplied practically all of Israel’s weapons for the war. An American air bridge had all but rescued the Jewish state. Kissinger now warned Golda that if fighting resumed, Israel could not count on further resupply. He also offered the opinion that there was “next to no chance” that the Egyptians would accept her proposal. Golda demanded that he march back to the State Department and present it anyway.

Several hours later, Kissinger notified Golda that the Egyptians had given in. The Israelis had won the Yom Kippur War. A separation agreement was concluded, one that gave Egypt a toehold on the east bank of the canal. But it forced them to pull back their surface-to-air missiles and other equipment, thereby rendering any future military adventure impossible.

The outcome of the war also forced Egypt to make a stark choice:

Make peace with losing the Sinai Peninsula or make peace with Israel. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad faced a similar choice and chose to give up the Golan Heights. Sadat famously chose peace—making an historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977, signing the Camp David Accords in 1978 and concluding with the IsraeliEgyptian peace treaty in 1979. Both historic documents were signed by Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Jimmy Carter. In 1982, Egypt received the Sinai Peninsula.

It was this agreement that broke the ice in Israeli-Arab relations. Only after Egypt, the largest and most important of the Arab countries, accepted a Jewish state could other smaller countries follow in its wake. Jordan and, much more recently, the countries that signed onto the Abraham Accords—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan—would never have dared to recognize Israel were it not for Camp David. And Camp David would never

Amid tense negotiations, Golda met with President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the beginning of November.

have happened had Israel not won the Yom Kippur War.

In short, golda pulled off the impossible. She defied the United Nations, stared down the Soviets, steamrolled the Egyptians and outlasted the Americans. Upon leaving office, Dayan said emotionally that

no Israeli prime minister had withstood outside pressure with greater fortitude than Golda.

The result spoke for itself: A nation caught almost completely off guard turned the tide of battle in less than three weeks. As for the initial intelligence failure, the postwar Agranat Commission found that

Golda had “acted properly” in the days leading up to the war.

All of which leads to a painful question. Why have Israelis judged her a failure? Every time they are asked by pollsters to rank their most admired prime ministers, David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and sometimes Yitzhak Rabin battle it out at the top. Golda always comes out at the bottom.

Circumstances no doubt played a part. The 1967 Six-Day War expanded Israel’s borders but it also raised expectations. The failure to achieve another easy victory and the loss of the sense of invincibility— these things were bound to take a toll.

There is a darker side as well. There were many in Israel who chose to glean from the Yom Kippur War

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Delegates from Israel (left) and Egypt at the signing of the cease-fire

Golda accepted a land-for-peace offer that Sadat’s widow, Jihan, gave to an Israeli newspaper in 1987 in which she said, “I don’t agree with those that say that Sadat tried to reach true peace before 1973. I believe he only wanted a cease-fire agreement, and nothing more.”

Maybe now, 50 years later, with a little more perspective—and a lot more declassified material—the true story can finally be told and Golda can take her rightful place in the pantheon of Israel’s great leaders.

Uri Kaufman spent over 20 years visiting battlefields, speaking to participants and reviewing thousands of pages of material for his book Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East, from which this piece was adapted. Copyright © 2023 by the author and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Sadat and Golda sculptures at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, Calif.

JONES/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/CC-BY-SA-2.0

Golda’s Genius

Connecting American Jews to Israel with joy

By Deborah E. Lipstadt

In writing this biography of Golda Meir, I faced a serious case of historical whiplash. I read myriad works—scholarly studies, popular books, memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, plays and essays—that address the life and career of Israel’s fourth prime minister. The portraits they drew of her and her accomplishments differed markedly. Some of these works vilified and reviled her. Others valorized and revered her. When studying a person’s life—particularly a life lived so publicly—one expects to find divergent evaluations. But these ranged from the venomous to the hagiographic. I experienced the same whiplash in personal encounters when discussing her impact and legacy.

Who, then, was the real Golda Meir? She was part of the small cadre of people who helped craft the Jewish state and lead it as it transformed from a wobbly enterprise to a regional military power. She was one of only two women to sign Israel’s Declaration of Independence. She was the first and, as of now, the only woman to lead Israel.

In addition to shaping Israeli society, she, possibly more than any other

Israeli with the exception of David Ben-Gurion, built and cemented the Jewish state’s relationship with the American Jewish community. American Jews were in awe of the brawny, tanned and swarthy sabras, the “new” Jews, the kibbutzniks and fighter pilots. But it was Golda who captured their hearts—and their purses—for the Zionist enterprise.

After the united nations voted to partition Palestine into two states on November 29, 1947, a war with the Arabs seemed inevitable. BenGurion, the head of the Jewish Agency and the de facto leader of the pre-state Jewish settlement known as the Yishuv, was painfully aware that the nascent state was in immediate need of a massive array of weapons to fight a real war. So he dispatched Eliezer Kaplan, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency, to America to raise funds. The goal was $7 million. He was unable to raise even a portion of that. In the wake of Kaplan’s failure, Ben-Gurion proposed going to the United States himself to raise the funds. Golda, then the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department,

insisting that his place was in the Yishuv, offered to go in his stead.

She departed in January 1948 with a shopping list that included jeeps, rockets, speed boats, small warships, medical equipment, tents, blankets— just about everything else a newly formed army would need. While her colleagues hoped she would fulfill Kaplan’s goal of $7 million, she had higher aspirations: $25 million.

Prior to embarking on her fundraising efforts, she joined the Jewish Agency’s mission to the United Nations and attended Security Council meetings as an observer. At a press conference she gave at the United Nations’ temporary home at Lake Success on New York’s Long Island, she rather undiplomatically attacked the British for the deliberate chaos and bloodshed they were leaving behind as the British Mandate in Palestine was coming to an end after 30 years. Not only were they failing to protect the Jewish community, but they were also arming the Arabs and doing everything possible to place obstacles in the path toward a Jewish state.

While her appearance at Lake Success was important, it was the fundraising she did that made this

As prime minister, speaking to Jewish community members in Washington, D.C., in 1969

trip memorable. When she had previously come to raise funds, her audiences had generally been committed Zionists who were, like her, immigrants or children of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Their mameloshn was Yiddish. They had hosted her in their homes, forced her to sit up late into the night describing the Yishuv’s wonders and proudly contributed the few dollars they had saved.

She had met some wealthy businesspeople before, but now she was going to meet a far broader, more powerful and wealthier swath of the American Jewish community. The General Assembly meeting of the Council of Jewish Federations was being held in Chicago. The participants represented the leadership, lay and professional, of virtually every Jewish community in the country. These were certainly not people who ever contemplated, even for a nanosecond, that Palestine was a place for them. In fact, some among them had opposed the Zionist enterprise. In the wake of the Holocaust, their opposition had waned, replaced by a grudging neutrality.

Now these Jewish leaders were caught between two fears: that a Jewish state might make them less secure in America and that there might be a repetition of the Holocaust tragedy, with Jews again finding no refuge. The right message could push them to support building the Jewish state. The wrong one would confirm their fears and hesitations about such a state and its impact on them as American citizens.

The federations’ ambivalence about the Zionist enterprise was evident in the fact that in the five months since the British announcement of their departure from Palestine and two months since the United Nations vote in favor of partitioning it into a Jewish and Arab state, they had not seen fit to include the topic of Palestine on their agenda. Admittedly, their main focus was on domestic matters. Yet one would have imagined they would have addressed, in some context, the welfare of close to 700,000 Jews in potential danger in the Yishuv.

Few of them had interacted with Golda previously. Those who had considered her a rather annoying Zionist apparatchik. Henry Montor, the professional leader of United Jewish Appeal, the organization that handled American Jewish overseas philanthropies, called her an “impecunious, unimportant representative, a ‘schnorrer.’ ” But he believed in the cause and knew there was a desperate need to find homes for Displaced Persons in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Setting aside his reservations, he pressured the Council of Jewish Federations to make room for her on the agenda. They allotted her 30 minutes.

Into that chicago hotel ballroom on a very snowy Sunday, she brought the skills of persuasion that she had been honing since her days as a young girl in Milwaukee. There is a Jewish aphorism: “Words that come from the heart, enter the heart.” And so it was that day. Speaking without notes, she melded the Zionist message of Jewish strength with a very American “can-do” spirit.

“The Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will fight with them. If not, we will fight with stones in our hands.... If these 700,000 Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish people as such is alive and Jewish independence assured.... My friends, we are at war.... Our problem is time.... The question is: What can we get immediately?... I do not mean next month. I do not mean two months from now. I mean now....”

Then, breaking with the predilection of some Zionist emissaries to paint Jews in Palestine as better, stronger and more resilient than their counterparts outside the Yishuv (even though she probably believed they were), she told them: “We are not the best Jews of the Jewish people. It so happened that we are there, and you are here. I am certain that if you were in Palestine and we were in the

Golda in 1956, when she served as minister of foreign affairs

‘ THERE WAS A JEWISH WOMAN WHO GOT THE MONEY TO MAKE THE STATE POSSIBLE. ’

—DAVID BEN-GURION

United States, you would be doing what we are doing there.”

While the Yishuv desperately needed American Jewry’s financial support, she did not hesitate to insist that this time, contrary to the norm, the ones who paid the bills would not determine the tune. The Yishuv would make its own decisions, she insisted in her speech. “You cannot decide whether we should fight or not. We will. The Jewish community in Palestine will raise no white flag for the Mufti. That decision is taken.”

But then, making her audience almost full partners in the enterprise, she returned to the choice they could make. “You can only decide one thing: whether we shall be victorious in this fight or whether the Mufti will be victorious. That decision American Jews can make. It has to be quickly,

within hours, within days.”

A clearly besotted audience member reported to those who had been unable to attend: “For 35 minutes she spoke.... Without emotion, never raising her voice, she told calmly the story of the defense of Jews in Palestine, of their homes and families.... Few personalities have ever received the ovation that greeted this woman of valor.” Montor, who had so personally disparaged her, recalled the “electric atmosphere” that prevailed in the ballroom and quickly began to arrange meetings for her in every city where there was a major Jewish community. He traveled with her from place to place, remaining awestruck by her abilities. “She had swept the whole community,” he once said.

By the end of that trip, she raised $50 million. Her success prompted

Ben-Gurion to observe that one day it would be said of Golda: “There was a Jewish woman who got the money to make the state possible.”

Her visit marked a number of beginnings. Listening to her speak, American Jews’ internalized fear of a repetition of the Holocaust was replaced by—or at least conjoined with—a vision of a new future. She brought a message of hope, something that had been rare for Jews for the preceding decade. Her visit was also the beginning of a relationship Golda would have with the broadest manifestation of American Jewry. They would follow her loyally throughout her career, do what she asked of them and embrace her in a way that many of her fellow Israelis would not. For this generation of American Jews, she came to epitomize the long-suffering but absolutely resolute mother who would do anything for her people—even at the expense of her own well-being.

But she meant more than that. She also spoke of the new breed of Jew, the children at home, the ones who were ready to fight for their people’s survival and not depend on others to do so in their stead. She did not look like the young, tanned, open-collared, swaggering sabras who farmed and

The renowned NY-based Sephardic music ensemble, celebrating 36 years of performances, presents exciting programs of Judeo-Spanish songs and stories.

Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion flanked by Zalman Shazar (left) and Giora Josephthal at a Labor Party conference in 1959

fought. But she spoke in their name and demanded of American Jewry that they not abandon them. From that visit on, she occupied a special place in the hearts of American Jews. Nothing would wrest her from it.

But this visit marked yet one more beginning, the beginning of the end of the American Zionist movement. The movement would, of course, grow exponentially during the 1950s and 1960s in the wake of the creation of the new Jewish state, when it would experience some of its strongest years.

But Golda, in reaching out to the “whole” community, was telegraphing a new, more all-encompassing

On to Victory Golda's prodigious fundraising helped purchase weapons, jeeps and everything else needed for a new army.

message. Jews who make their home in America did not have to be committed Zionists or make aliyah to be part of this partnership. Their fellow Jews who were building the Jewish state needed help, and they could offer it. And she repeatedly laid out the terms of the partnership. It had its responsibilities. But, she reminded them, it also had its benefits and rewards: “We certainly cannot go on from here without your help.... Believe me, my friends, that’s all we ask of you—to share in this responsibility with everything that it implies— difficulties, problems, hardships, but also joy,” she wrote in her 1975 autobiography, My Life.

Just three years after learning of the devastating reality of the Shoah, Jews were being asked to do something for other Jews—and to do it with joy. They were being asked to donate not until it hurt but until it felt good, joyously good. This was Golda’s genius.

Deborah E. Lipstadt, a longtime professor at Emory University and author of several books, currently serves in the Biden administration as the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. This article is excerpted from her latest, Golda Meir: Israel’s Matriarch, new from Yale University Press/Jewish Lives. Copyright © 2023 by Deborah E. Lipstadt. Published with permission.

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My Torah Journey

Finding solace in Hebrew study and community

By Rita Plush

Iwas 58 when i started learning Hebrew. My mother had died, and I wanted to honor her with the Kaddish prayer.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’may rabbah…. When I began reading those transliterated words, it was as if the very heavens shook something loose in me and spun me into something larger than myself. I became part of a continuum of Jews who, for centuries, had shown their respect for their dearest ones. I was connected to those in the past as well as to Jews in the present who were saying Kaddish, whoever and wherever they might be.

Yet something was missing. Reading the prayer phonetically was not enough. I wanted to read it in Hebrew, the language of my people. And so, after I began saying Kaddish, I joined a Read Hebrew America class being offered by the National Jewish Outreach Program.

It took time and study. I labored over the little T’s, dots and dashes that gave the vowels their sounds. Is it eh or ah, fah or feh? But I kept at it, and after a few months, I was starting to read along, all the while feeling the presence of the matriarchs—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and

Leah—and now, among them, my mother, Malka Weingarten.

When my mourning period ended, I continued to attend Shabbat services at my Conservative synagogue, Etz Hayim at Hollis Hills Bayside in Queens, N.Y. My spiritual home and fellow congregants became an important part of my life.

That importance only grew when my father, Max, died eight years later, and then again when my dear husband, Herbert, passed away in 2015. And still again in 2019, when my 60-year-old son, Alan, was torn from my life after battling ALS for more than eight years—the worst-ofthe-worst imaginable for a mother.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’may rabbah…. My community recited along with me at Alan’s shiva, giving comfort as best they could to me and my two daughters, all the while knowing there could be no comfort. I had lost a beloved child; how could there be anything but pain?

Benumbed with grief—maybe because of it—I wanted, needed to be in the world again. I forced myself back into socializing, reading and writing. And into the synagogue. Did I pray there? To whom? For what?

Alan was gone. Three years prior, my daughter Leslie had been diagnosed with an advanced breast cancer that seemed to reject every treatment. I was full out of prayers. So I sat, at times following the service with my rudimentary Hebrew, at times not. But always, I knew I was in the right place.

On the Shabbatot when I carried the Torah, I would rest it up against my shoulder, the blessed scroll cloaked beneath its embroidered velvet robe and hammered silver breast plate, a crown atop its regal head. Arms around the Torah, I hugged it to me as if it was a living breathing being.

Two years ago, when my Leslie lay dying in her hospital bed, she said to me, “I want you to say Kaddish for 10 years.”

“That’s all?”

She wanted to be remembered. She need not have worried.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’may rabbah…. I knew it by heart now. I was reliving every mother’s nightmare. My heart was broken, but not my love of Judaism.

For months, every day in synagogue, I chanted Kaddish in Leslie’s honor. Fifty-five and in her grave. And I, her almost-85-year-old mother, was in excellent health. The wrongness of it! She’s in a better place? She’s no longer suffering? Please!

During shacharit one morning during the mourning period, it occurred to me that the services were

Among the Matriarchs The author with her mother, Malka (left), and with her husband, Herbert, and their children at the couple’s surprise 25th anniversary party.

always led by congregants—congregants like me, only more adept at reading Hebrew. But I knew some had not always been so adept; they were once beginners, too. I thought, I could push myself out of my soul-crushing loss into something positive. I could take charge of my grief. I could learn. I would learn.

So eager was I about the prospect of mastering Hebrew that I could barely sit through the concluding psalm. So worried was I that I might change my mind that I rushed to the rabbi immediately after the service.

He said I would first learn the end of shacharit that beginners “cut their teeth on.” My gums began hurting in anticipation, but I couldn’t back out now.

My synagogue’s ritual director mapped out my study plan. I marked the parts in my prayer book, and he recorded himself reciting those same passages on my phone so that I could get the rhythm and pronunciation just so. Three times a day, every day for several months, I went through my part at home and twice a week with him at the synagogue. Over and over, refining it, until he thought I was ready.

Yet I was nervous. Would I read so flawlessly before the congregation?

I did not. I erred and it wasn’t divine, but I forgave myself.

Foolhardy or fearless (a little of both?), I wanted more. I wanted the ultimate read. I wanted to read Torah for my upcoming 85th birthday.

Anxiety bubbled up. Reading from a prayer book was one thing; there are vowel marks to sound out the letters. A Torah scroll is vowelless—and I would be clueless. But the rabbi broke it down for me into manageable parts.

I learned Torah the way my children and grandchildren had learned their bar and bat mitzvah portions.

First, from a printed page with vowel sounds. Later, from the rabbi’s recording. Finally, I studied from a photo taken of the actual scroll from which I would read. Through last summer and into the fall I practiced. This would be my Carnegie Hall. Finally, the day came. On September 17, 2022, I read Deuteronomy 26: 16-19, the Ki Tavo parsha, which comes toward the end of the yearly Torah cycle. Four sentences, a total of 1.7 minutes.

Hayom hazeh, Adonai, Elohecha mitzavchah…. “The Lord your God commands you this day…” Sacred unchangeable words from the parsha.

Reading Torah, I was more than

myself. I was an inheritor of the paths laid down by my parents and grandparents and those who came before them. My daughter Rhonda by my side up on the bimah. Her daughter, Molly, child of my child, was unable to be at my reading but had sent me her Torah pointer. Holding it in my hand, I moved it across the holy words. And my mother, in whose loving memory I had first begun to learn Hebrew, was there with us. Forever in our hearts.

Love and Grief Plush’s late children, Alan and Leslie (top, center and right), and daughter Rhonda; the author in Florida with her husband, who passed away in 2015.

Rita Plush lives in Queens, N.Y. She is the author of the novels Lily Steps Out , Feminine Products and the short story collection Alterations . She is the book reviewer for Fire Island News

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Our beloved mom, Charlotte (Tzivia bas Malka Perel) was interred at the Jewish Community Cemetery on Smith Road in Doylestown, PA on July 1, 2023 (12 Tammuz 5783). She lived in Pennsylvania for most of her life, working and raising four children with her husband David, of blessed memory. A connoisseur of coffee, chocolate and kugel, she was well known as a cheerful and experimental cook who loved hosting festive holiday meals. A renowned and gifted nurse educator, Charlotte pioneered nurse training methods at the University of Scranton, following her own long and fulfilling nursing career. She was a proud Hadassah member in Doylestown for 52 years, serving two terms as chapter president. Charlotte’s fellow chapter members became lifelong friends who added much fun, richness and meaning to her life. She is sorely missed by her children Sylvia, Carol, Ted and Amy, her sons- and daughtersin-law, and nine grandchildren. (This is a fictitious person; the text above is used for example purposes only.)

Stop That Tumble Before It Happens

A senior is treated in the ER for a fall every 11 seconds

By Carol Saline

On a bright autumn day in October 2021, Sue Loeb arrived at a storage facility to meet with a vintage furniture dealer and purchase a midcentury-modern piece for her new apartment. The active 70-year-old left her car, turned sharply to greet the furniture dealer and tripped on an uneven piece of sidewalk.

She hit the ground headfirst—as she describes it, like a door released from its hinge. “The first thing I felt was embarrassment,” she recalled. “I felt like a stupid old lady, falling over.” Embarrassment was the least of her problems. She’d broken her nose, fractured her elbow and suffered a frontal lobe concussion.

To compound her problems, Loeb (who asked that her real name not be used because she is currently in litigation over the fall) was about to move from a large house to an apartment. Her husband has Parkinson’s disease and heart issues and could offer little assistance.

“All I wanted to do was lie down and rest,” she said, “but I had to orchestrate this enormous move. I was having headaches and losing my balance. I’d get dizzy and my legs

would buckle. It was a nightmare.”

Sadly, it still is. She’s had several stints of physical therapy and after every discharge, the headaches and balance issues return. She needed reconstructive surgery to repair the broken bones in her nose, but she still can’t breathe properly and is scheduled for a second operation.

The worse part has been the promises of recovery that just don’t materialize. “In the beginning,” Loeb said, “the doctors and the physical therapists tell you, ‘Wait a few weeks and this or that will improve.’ Then it’s a few months. After almost two years, I still have several headaches every day. If I turn too quickly, I lose my balance. This fall has just sucked the oxygen out of my life.”

As soon as humans can stand up, they fall down. Toddlers tumble, you give them a lollipop and they’re fine. Teens break a bone playing sports and they usually heal in a few months. But when an older adult falls, life frequently collapses into catastrophe.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every 11 seconds, an older

adult is treated in the emergency room for a fall. And every year, one in four Americans over 65 falls— more women than men.

One out of every five falls results in a broken bone or a head injury. More than 95 percent of all hip fractures in seniors are caused by a fall, and 30 percent of those patients die within a year—higher than the mortality rate of most cancers.

Too often, falls are shrugged off as a normal part of getting older when, in fact, they are more likely to happen due to a sedentary lifestyle that hastens the decrepitude of aging. The root cause of a tumble can be lifestyle, according to Dr. Mike Cirigliano. “People who live alone”— like many older adults—“tend to be sedentary,” said the internist, who practices at the Penn Health System in Philadelphia. “The less they move, the weaker they get. The more deconditioned they become, the more they’re prone to falls.”

Falls should not be considered accidents, Dr. Cirigliano cautioned. “There is almost always an underlying reason,” he said. “It may be a symptom of a neurologic disorder like Parkinson’s disease or a medical disorder like a stroke, dementia or osteoporosis.”

Bones become weaker, more brittle and more likely to fracture with age. Indeed, Dr. Andrea Singer, medical director of the Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation, a national health organization located in Arlington, Va., advises anyone over 50—particularly those who have fallen—to get a bone density test to check their bone health.

Representative Lois Frankel had no idea of the physical, emotional and financial effects of a bad fall until her 95-year-old mother slipped in her bathroom and broke her hip last year.

Today, Frankel, a Democrat from

Florida, is a leading voice in Congress on the issue of fall prevention, where she has managed to get a variety of fall prevention programs funded. Currently, she is working to expand Medicare coverage to include assessments on fall-proofing homes before a fall transpires (Medicare will often pay for an assessment after a fall that had serious consequences) and the installation of modifications like grab bars in showers.

“This is not a glamorous issue,” acknowledged the congresswoman, who has introduced bipartisan legislation to recognize a week in September as National Fall Prevention Awareness Week. Support groups and advocacy organizations, such as the National Council on Aging, have also designated September as a time to focus on fall prevention awareness, revolving around the first day of the fall season. “Doctors and federal agencies have to take this problem more seriously,” said Frankel. “Everybody falls, and it’s critical that people become more aware of how to protect themselves.”

Protecting yourself in your residence is step one, since, according to the CDC, 60 percent of falls happen at home. A top priority, say medical professionals, is not to walk around the house in socks unless they have non-slide treads. Better still, always wear shoes with good soles. Next, do

FOR FURTHER TIPS

National Council on Aging: ncoa.org/older-adults/health/ prevention/falls-prevention

National Institute on Aging: nia.nih.gov/health/topics/falls-andfalls-prevention

A Matter of Balance: mainehealth.org/mob

a home inspection for potential hazards. Does the tub or shower have grab bars? Are there throw rugs to slip on? (See “Tips” box for resources.)

Men and women start to lose muscle mass around age 30. Several decades later, consider scheduling a fall-assessment appointment to measure your strength, balance and flexibility, suggests physical therapist Heather Cianci, a geriatric clinical specialist at the Dan Aaron Parkinson’s Rehabilitation Center in Philadelphia. Typically done by a certified physical therapist, this targeted evaluation includes assessment of muscle strength and gait.

There are also fall prevention programs offered nationwide through hospitals and community centers. Call your state or local agencies to learn about them; most are underwritten or sponsored, so there is little or no cost.

Jennifer Rubin, an injury prevention specialist, recommends A Matter of Balance, a national program developed by Maine State Health that she supervises at University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, Calif. This two-hour, eight-week course covers fear of falling, gives strategies for prevention and introduces mild exercises.

Indeed, in any conversation about fall awareness and prevention, the key word is exercise, preferably with the advice of a balance and gait specialist. People in good shape are less likely to suffer dire consequences from a fall. You can also condition yourself to avoid falls by developing a minimal fitness regimen at home. (See sidebar for exercise suggestions.)

Research shows that addressing the reasons for a fall can significantly reduce the risk of future injuries. Unfortunately, the typical 20-minute

REDUCE YOUR RISK

Physical therapist Heather Cianci of the Dan Aaron Parkinson Rehabilitation Center suggests a number of daily exercises:

Stand on one foot with the other foot off the ground for at least 10 seconds, increasing the time you hold the foot off the ground until you can do this on each foot for 30 seconds without holding on. Start with holding the foot slightly raised and work your way up to holding it up with your knee at 90 degrees.

Sit on a chair or stool, cross your arms over your chest and stand up and sit down 10 times.

Using a stair or low stool, step up and down 10 times on each leg.

To improve posture, raise your arms in front of you with bent elbows in a “don’t shoot” position and squeeze your shoulder blades together 10 times.

Get a minimum of 4,000 steps daily, the more the better. However, walking by itself, without balance exercises, is not considered enough for fall prevention.

Do some kind of brain exercise, like word games or board games.

doctor visit barely allows time to go beyond discussing any stumbles you had within the last three months. Forget about exploring the latent causes.

“Don’t depend on your doctor to bring up a discussion of fall prevention,” cautions Lyndon Joseph, Ph.D., a program director at the National Institute on Aging. “If you feel weak, fatigued or dizzy, or are worried about falling, it’s up to you to initiate the conversation.”

Bottom line: The best way to avoid falling on your face is to take matters into your own hands.

Carol Saline is a journalist, speaker and author of the photo-essay books Sisters and Mothers & Daughters

An Introduction to Organoids

The revolutionary platform for personalized care and medical research

|

By Wendy Elliman

In a chamber deep within the rocky Judean Hills, suspended in liquid nitrogen at a mind-numbingly cold -320°, are frontline technological tools that are transforming health care. They are organoids: tiny clumps of tissue developed from stem cells that function much as tissues do in the human body.

The organoids, which range in size from several millimeters to less than the width of a hair, have been grown in the labs of the Hadassah Medical Organization on the Ein Kerem campus, some from no more than a single cell. They are being used both to research diseases and determine the best treatment for individual patients.

Welcome to HMO’s Organoid Center. Opened in October 2020 within the Wohl Institute for Translational Medicine, it is the first biobank of its kind in Israel and one of only a handful worldwide.

“Organoid technology is enabling Hadassah to take targeted, personalized medicine to a new level, to advance innovative drug development and to create a human-tissue research platform for the global scientific community,” said Dr. Eyal Mishani, director-general of Hadassah’s Research Fund and director of the Research and Development and

Innovation Division, who led the establishment of the Organoid Center.

To date, 145 patients have contributed cells from which organoids can be derived, with that number increasing each week. Among these contributors is a 48-year-old woman who battled an aggressive breast cancer for eight years. Her oncologist, Dr. Tamar Peretz, had contacted the center, and with the woman’s agreement, cells from her tumor were sent to the biobank.

“Within a week we derived sufficient organoids from this patient’s tumor cells to screen several possible medications,” said Myriam Grunewald, Ph.D., who heads the center and is its scientific director. “We found that an FDA-approved drug, not generally used in cancer patients, offered her the best outcome.”

Another biobank donor is a woman whose difficult-to-treat asthma turned out to be cystic fibrosis (CF), a diagnosis she recently received at age 36. “We used her organoids for drug screening and could confidently tell her clinician: ‘Of the CF medications available, this is the recommended regimen,’ ” said the center’s clinical director, pediatric gastroenterologist Dr. Liron Birimberg-Schwartz.

The organoids created from these cells are not only helping patients—ending the trial and error of traditional clinical care—they are also being used as the best model yet for investigating human disease.

Take cancer, for example, a major research focus at HMO. The traditional research models are two-dimensional cell cultures and lab animals, “but neither maintains the heterogeneity or complex interactions of human cancer cells,” explained Grunewald. “Not only is this maintained in patient-derived tumor organoids, but they can also be expanded, stored and used to develop new drugs for cancer and other research.”

Also being investigated at the center is the hereditary eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, which blinds sufferers by destroying the retina’s vital light-absorbing photoreceptors. The center is in the process of creating organoids from two siblings—one, age 7, who has the mutation for retinitis pigmentosa, and his 11-year-old brother, who does not. “They’ll help us understand the disease mechanism and enable us to test drugs that prevent or at least significantly delay death of the photoreceptor cells,” said Grunewald. “Long term, we’re looking for a way to grow and transplant healthy retinas.”

Organoid technology is only 14 years old. Its basis is the cells with regenerative potential known as stem cells. Dutch geneticist Dr. Hans Clevers and his team at Utrecht’s Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands identified adult stem cells in tissue biopsied from the small intestine of a mouse. They coaxed the cells to follow their genetic programming in their lab and watched them assemble themselves

into three-dimensional tissue structures. These were the first organoids.

For HMO, an organoid biobank was an obvious step. “We’re a stemcell research pioneer, we’ve always emphasized translational medicine, and we have a proud history of innovation,” said Dr. Mishani, the driver behind much of that innovation. “I presented it at a Hadassah conference in Boston in 2022 and a $250,000 contribution was immediately forthcoming. Ultimately, Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, funded 80 percent of Hadassah’s Organoid Center.”

To bring organoid technology to HMO, Dr. Mishani turned to Grunewald and Dr. Birimberg-Schwartz. The former grew up in southern France, moved to Israel over 30 years ago and received a doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was working on the physiology of the vascular system when Dr. Mishani approached her. “I immediately accepted the challenge,” Grunewald said.

Dr. Birimberg-Schwartz, who was born in Israel and trained at Hadassah’s medical school, was in Toronto on a gastroenterology fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children, which was already exploring organoid technology. “As part of our research, we screened the organoids of a CF patient for whom no effective medication was available—and found a drug combination that worked for her,” she recalled of her work in Toronto. “This changed my path as a clinician.”

Grunewald and Dr. Birimberg-Schwartz lead a staff of 10 at the center, among them research scientists and biotechnology doctoral candidates.

“Each week, we review the medical organization’s scheduled biopsies and surgeries, and select about four patients to expand the biobank,” explained Grunewald. “The oldest patient to donate tissue, to date, is an 85-year-old woman who underwent resection of her endometrium. The youngest has a rare genetic disease that impacted her intestines and was 7 when we received her intestine biopsies.”

Patients or guardians give written informed consent for the tissue, healthy and diseased, to be included in the bank. Each sample is documented with details of the patient, physicians, treatments, medications and follow-up.

Once the center receives the tissue sample, it cultures the sample in a specific way. The cells reproduce, interconnect and arrange themselves in the culture dish as they would in the human body. The three-dimensional organoids they form are smaller versions of the tissues from which they come, virtually identical both molecularly and functionally. They are then deep-frozen in HMO’s underground liquid nitrogen bank until needed.

Progress has been made since the technology was developed in the Netherlands in 2009. “At Hadassah today, we grow organoids from almost any tissue in the human body,” said Grunewald. “The patient with breast cancer was too sick to biopsy, so we took fluid draining from her lungs, found tumor cells there and created organoids—the first in Israel to do so from this buildup of excess fluid in the lungs.”

The organoids in Hadassah’s biobank can help develop new medical technology worldwide. “While organ-

HADASSAH ON CALL

Decode today’s developments in health and medicine, from new treatments to tips on staying healthy, with the Hadassah On Call podcast. In each episode, journalist Maayan Hoffman, a third-generation Hadassah member, interviews one of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s top doctors, nurses or medical innovators. Catch up on recent episodes, including a discussion about asthma and sleep with pediatric pulmonologist Dr. Joel Reiter, the head of HMO’s sleep clinic. Subscribe and share your comments at hadassah.org/hadassah oncall or wherever you listen to podcasts.

oids are used for research in several labs, those in Hadassah’s biobank are accessible to the entire scientific community—researchers, clinicians, pharmaceutical companies,” said Dr. Birimberg-Schwartz. “Within Hadassah, the technology is applied to personalized medicine, examining new drugs and repurposing existing medications in a two-way communication between medical center clinicians and scientists.”

As the technology races forward, “organoids will provide solutions for testing costly medicines and for currently nonprofitable research into rare mutations and orphan diseases,” according to Dr. Mishani. “And,” he continued, “the contribution of organoids is still only partly realized. Most exciting of all is that they’re emerging as a source of transplantable tissues. Down the road, they’ll likely be grown and implanted into patients to heal non-functioning tissues and organs.”

Wendy Elliman is a British-born science writer who has lived in Israel for more than four decades.

Myriam Grunewald Dr. Liron Birimberg-Schwartz

Accomplishments Past, Present and Future

The High Holidays offer a time to take stock

New Beginnings, New Commitments

By Naomi Adler Hadassah CEO

In her poem “casting away,” feminist poet and Judaic scholar Marcia Falk, a Hadassah life member, writes about the power of tashlich, the symbolic Rosh Hashanah ritual of casting away one’s sins.

We cast into the depths of the sea our sins, and failures, and regrets. Reflections of our imperfect selves flow away….

This year, I urge you to take a moment to consider how this small, yet cathartic and meaningful tradition can enrich your High Holidays. In my family, we take tashlich very seriously. It’s a time to take stock as a group as well as individually. To take off our fancy clothes, go to the nearest body of water and cast the bread away with our sins. In addition to throwing stale challah into the river, our tradition has always been to add a special reflection on counting the blessings and miracles of our family—and on the losses, including those that trace back to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Every Rosh Hashanah, we’re pre-

sented with the opportunity to reflect on who we want to be in the year ahead. Part of this is deeply personal. And part of it is about how we’ll move through the world around us.

At Hadassah, that means the important collaborative work of releasing annual plans for engaging members and donors, building on where we’ve been most effective and determining what we, as the largest Jewish women’s organization in the United States, can achieve in America as well as in Israel.

Journalist Lucy Alexander recently reported in the Robb Report: “The hot topic in the field of philanthropy this year has been the imminent transfer of financial power from men to women…. How they choose to spend their newfound cache stands to unleash some of the most profound changes to philanthropy in decades.” That transfer is imminent, writes Alexander, because by 2035, women stand to inherit 70 percent of baby boomers’ intergenerational wealth “largely because women tend to be younger than their husbands and to live longer.” Yet while there are nearly 50,000 organizations in the United States dedicated to women and girls, they receive less than 2 percent of all charitable giving, according to the Women’s Philanthropy Institute. In

this context, I want to share my gratitude for Hadassah members and supporters.

This year, thanks to your support, we’ve brought thousands of younger women into our extended Hadassah family, positioning Hadassah to foster women’s leadership and philanthropy for many decades to come. At the same time, we’re proud of all we’ve already accomplished as we set our eyes to the future—including to our online symposium in October, “Inspire Zionism: Tech, Trailblazers and Tattoos.” Those sessions will infuse new energy into a forwardlooking Zionism where women’s voices and vision play a pivotal role, building on our list of 18 American Zionist Women You Should Know (hadassah.org/18women).

But before we move too quickly into the year 5784, let’s take one more moment to contemplate Falk’s beautiful poetic wisdom: We empty our hands, release the remnants of shame, let go fear and despair that have dug their home in us. Open hands, opening heart— The year flows out, the year flows in.

I hope you’ll join me in opening your heart in the New Year—to engendering hope and healing and, of course, your continued support of Hadassah.

L’shanah tovah Naomi Adler

Observing ‘tashlich’

THE HEART OF HADASSAH—PRIDE, PASSION AND PURPOSE

Chicago was abuzz in July as nearly 250 Hadassah leaders, members, Associates, donors and staff convened for a symposium and national business meetings. Panels on Hope and Healing at the Hadassah Medical Organization, Women’s Empowerment and Zionism were among those that galvanized the delegates from around the country.

National President Rhoda Smolow officiated at her last National Assembly meeting, as she will pass the torch to Carol Ann Schwartz, who was elected to become the 28th national president beginning January 1, 2024. (Schwartz and Smolow appear together, at left.)

Among the many inspiring stories of Hadassah’s healing work, four HMO doctors (second row from the bottom) shared their experiences as fellows and researchers currently doing stints in Chicago and Toronto. Representatives of Evolve Hadassah: The Next Generation brought their own spirit to the gathering, including Jody Comins, Evolve’s Israel Travel chair (with water bottle), and members of the first cohort of Evolve fellows and their leaders (bottom, left to right): Amy Sapeika; Emily Shrode; Randi Richmond, Evolve director; Leah Felner; Robin Katcoff; Sandye Fertman; Debbie Knight, Evolve chair; and Pam Brode. Find full coverage at hadassah.org/ story/hadassahinchicago.

ZIONISM…DID YOU KNOW?

As we begin a new year, let’s look at building projects in the modern Land of Israel that constituted several “firsts.”

In Jerusalem, the Mishkenot Sha’ananim neighborhood dates to the late 1850s. British banker and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore funded its settlement, the first outside the Old City walls, to alleviate overcrowding and squalor.

Also known as the mother of the  mo‑ shavot for being the first agricultural settlement established by Zionists, in 1878, Petach Tikvah is the birthplace of actress Gal Gadot.

AND THE (ROCKOWER) AWARD GOES TO…

Hadassah Magazine  has won nine Simon Rockower Awards, the annual prizes for excellence in Jewish journalism handed out by the American Jewish Press Association. The magazine was recognized on July 11 for its work done in 2022 during the AJPA’s 42nd annual conference, this year held in New Orleans.

Longtime  Hadassah Magazine  contributor Rahel Musleah collected four awards, two of them in the category of Excellence in Writing about Social Justice and Humanitarian Work. Praised by the judges for its “thorough reporting on how others can help the refugee crisis and good human interest,” Musleah’s “Welcoming the Stranger, Literally” won first place. Her profile of Georgette Bennett (“Bringing Light Into Darkness”) won honorable mention.

In the category of Excellence in Writing about Antisemitism, Musleah won first place for her story, “Battling Antisemitism on Cam -

Begun in 1882 by Jewish immigrants from Kharkiv, Ukraine, who were part of the First Aliyah, Rishon Lezion was the first Zionist community founded in the Land of Israel.

Older than Tel Aviv itself, in the 1880s, Neve Tzedek  became the first satellite Jewish community built outside of ancient Jaffa. (Tel Aviv wasn’t established until 1909.)

In the Negev region, Beersheba’s first neighborhood, Alef , was built after Israeli independence to provide housing for immigrants from Morocco, Iraq, Yemen and India. The second neighborhood, Bet , was also built in the 1950s and became home to Jews from Poland, Egypt and later Libya (1960s), Georgia and Russia (1970s).

NOW YOU KNOW… MORE ABOUT MODERN ISRAEL’S FIRST COMMUNITIES

pus,” and veteran  Hadassah Magazine  writer Hilary Danailova was awarded second place for “A Place at the Diversity Table,” which explored anti-Jewish bias in arts and culture. With both stories being “so well written, thoughtful and eloquent,” the judges admitted it was difficult to award one story over the other.

Hadassah Magazine  won second place for “50 Years of Women in the Rabbinate” in the category of Excellence in Special Sections or Supplements. The March/April 2022 theme issue featured articles by Debra Nussbaum Cohen (“Transforming the Rabbinate Over 50 Years” and “Building Community Far From the Madding Crowd”); Rahel Musleah (“A Showcase of Rabbinic Achievement” and “Envisioning the Rabbinate Through a Different Lens”); Michele Chabin (“In Israel, Breaking Barriers in the Orthodox World”); the magazine’s executive editor, Lisa Hostein (“Blu Greenberg Is Still Advocating for That Rabbinic Will,”); Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss (“The Would-Be Rabbis”); and Rabbis Sally Priesand, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso and Amy Eilberg as well as Rabba Sara Hurwitz

who contributed to “Then and Now: Challenges for the Jewish Community.”

Hadassah Mag

azine  Digital Editor

Arielle Kaplan won second place for “Jewish Matchmaking? There’s an App for That” in the category of Excellence in Writing About Young Families/People.

Meanwhile, Dina Kraft won second place in the category of Excellence in Feature Writing for “Israel’s Take on Abortion.”

In the category of Excellence in Single Commentary, Rabbanit Adena Berkowitz won an honorable mention for “Jewish Tradition’s Nuanced Approach to Abortion.”

And an honorable mention was awarded to Rabbi Shira Stutman for “What if Ruth Didn’t Convert?” in the category of Excellence in Writing About Jewish Thought and Life.

“I am so grateful once again for the AJPA’s recognition of the talented writers and editors who are responsible for  Hadassah Magazine ’s journalistic achievements,” said Hostein, the executive editor. “It is especially fitting that our stories of women’s empowerment, reproductive rights, antisemitism and social justice garnered top awards. These are the kinds of issues that matter to our readers, and these are the stories we will continue to pursue.”

YEAR IN REVIEW

Hadassah’s 2022 digital annual report is out, and its pages are brimming with examples of Hadassah’s impact in the United States, Israel and around the world. Thanks to our invaluable members and supporters, Hadassah had a remarkable year of bringing healing where it’s most needed.

Read more at annualreport.hadassah.org or by scanning this QR code.

Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv

bold conversations. brave spaces.

Zionism is complex. We’re here to talk about it. Join Hadassah for our symposium featuring Zionist innovators from diverse industries and backgrounds.

Inspire Zionism: Tech, Trailblazers and Tattoos

October 25, 12–3:30 pm ET & October 26, 4–8 pm ET, Virtual

Zionism in the LGBTQIA+ community, Zionism and people of color, Jews and tattoos — we go there. And beyond. Our panel discussions promise to be thought-provoking, relevant and informative. Join them all or however many you’d like.

Panelists include human rights activist and news correspondent Emily Schrader, Activista Media founder Leah Soibel, singer-songwriter Shy Ashkenazi, author and entrepreneur Rayna Rose Exelbierd and many more!*

*Speaker list subject to change

REGISTER NOW. go.hadassah.org/inspire2023

Hosted by Stephanie Butnick from the Unorthodox podcast

Building Bridges Through Travel

A dual narrative tour of Israel and the Palestinian Territories |

When we arrived at the Artist Hotel, an airy boutique property two blocks from Tel Aviv’s Bograshov Beach, the concierge greeted my partner, Paul, and me with a warm “hello” and two breezily delivered dictums: Breakfast was from 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and if air raid sirens blared, head to the bomb shelter or get as close to the ground as possible. Recent Israeli airstrikes in Gaza had “killed three terrorist leaders and some other people,” he told us. Palestinian groups had fired over 600 rockets. Oh, and happy hour was starting. Did we want wine and cheese?

A 65-year-old child of Holocaust survivors, I last visited Israel at age 17, when two friends and I picked apples on a kibbutz. Until my trip in May, I hadn’t been back for nearly 48 years. I’d returned for a seven-day “dual narrative” expedition created by MEJDI Tours that, according to its promotional literature, would be “led by an Israeli and Palestinian guide who will debate and highlight different political and historical opinions at each site.”

MEJDI Tours was founded in 2013 by Aziz Abu Sarah, a Muslim from East Jerusalem, and Scott Cooper, a Jewish social enterprise entrepreneur and businessman who lives in Chicago. The two shared a background in international conflict mediation and a desire to connect people through travel. In addition to tours in the Middle East, which also include Egypt and Turkey, MEJDI offers trips in other historically strife-ridden lands, such as Ireland and the American South.

As Paul and I sipped Shoresh Blanc from Tzora Vineyards and nibbled chunks of Tzfatit cheese, I confided to him for perhaps the 100th time since booking this trip: “I pray my parents in heaven won’t view my talking to Arabs as betrayal…. But until we see our ‘enemies’ as human beings, how can we find ways to live peacefully side by side?”

I inhaled a second glass of white wine. “I’m still haunted by my mother’s face when we watched Palestinian terrorists attack Israel’s Olympic team at the Munich Games

By Sherry Amatenstein

in 1972,” I told Paul. “Israel must exist…but it’s complicated.”

The next morning, we headed to the lobby to meet the 12 other travelers in our group and two guides: Yaniv, a middle-aged peace builder who requested that his real name not be used because of what he described as the heightened political environment in Israel right now, and Alaa, a 2008 graduate of the Conflict Transformation

Kedumim Square in Jaffa

The author and her partner, Paul, at happy hour at the Artist Hotel in Tel Aviv

master’s program at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. Paul and I instantly felt comfortable with our mostly Medicare-eligible companions, all from the United States and representing diverse heritages, including Native American, Chinese and Black.

Before boarding the bus, Yaniv, who hails from the Negev region, told us that the messages he grew up with “were to be afraid of Palestinians because Jews are always under attack. Until I was 30, I never met ‘the other’ face-to-face unless I was in uniform.”

Alaa grew up in Akko, a mixed city of Jews, Christians and Muslims, where he said he was exposed to the rhetoric of Meir Kahane. The late Orthodox rabbi and founder of the Jewish Defense League referred to Arabs as “dogs” and called for their expulsion from Israel. Alaa ultimately chose to follow the example of coexistence learned from his mother, who helped establish the Sir Charles Clore Jewish Arab Community Center, a local initiative that remains active today.

Our first stop was a short drive from the shimmering 24/7 metropolis of Tel Aviv: 4,000-year-old Jaffa. The ancient coastal city has endured many conquerors, including Canaanites, Egyptians, Israelites and the Ottomans—up through May 1948, when Israel took control after, depending on who is narrating,

either the War of Independence or the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe).

Also depending upon the narrator, Jaffa is a symbol of peaceful coexistence or emblematic of the Jewish state’s erasure of Arabs. An erasure initially due to voluntary as well as forced expulsion of Arab residents and, currently, to gentrification, with housing prices almost out of reach for many of the city’s remaining 16,000 Arabs. (The area is home to 30,000 Jews.)

The Wishing Bridge in Jaffa connects Kedumim Square, a beguiling mishmash of archeological remains, chic shops and galleries, to Peak Park. Carved into the wooden structure are bronze statues of the 12 zodiac signs. “Legend says if you stand on this bridge and touch your sign while looking at the sea your wish will come true,” Alaa said. “Not to influence you, but I wish for peace.”

After our next stop at Tel Aviv’s ANU-Museum of the Jewish People, I experienced a swell of pride. The recently renovated and expanded institution utilizes videos, interactive stations and artifacts—ranging from the Codex Sassoon, an 1,100-yearold Hebrew Bible, to a collar

worn by late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—to showcase not just our tragedies but the sweep of Jewish accomplishments.

But my inner “yays” grew quieter during our subsequent excursion into Ramallah and Bethlehem, both located in Area A of the Palestinian Territories.

As outlined by the 1995 Oslo II Accord in what was intended to be an interim agreement, the territories are divided into sections: Area A, which is fully under Palestinian Authority control and where Israel has declared it illegal for its citizens to enter, though an exception is generally made for Israeli Arabs; Area B, in which the Palestinian Authority has administrative control, but security is overseen by Israel; and Area C, covering over 60 percent of the West Bank, where Israel maintains exclusive control.

Temporarily sans Yaniv since he cannot enter Area A, we learned that Ramallah, on the crest of the Judaean Hills, is more liberal than most large Muslim communities. Alcohol is permitted and women freely run businesses. Indeed, female chef Fidaa Abuhamdiya led us on a food tour, which was followed by a visit to a bakery managed by Arab women.

In a meeting room of Farah Locanda, an Ottoman-era houseturned-boutique hotel, our group sipped water as we listened to Samir Othman Hulileh, the chairman of the

The 1,100-year-old Codex Sassoon

Banksy’s Walled Off Hotel located directly adjacent to the separation wall in Bethlehem

local stock exchange. Hulileh’s voice cracked as he recalled the morning in 2002 when his approximately 20-mile-drive to the factory that he owns in Bethlehem was interrupted by a call from a close friend who is an Israeli artist and army reservist.

The message: Hulileh should turn back. Israel and Hamas were clashing, and the army needed his factory as an interrogation center. “I’ll watch out for it,” his friend promised. Weeks later, the factory reopened.

“We still visit each other’s homes, but it has never been the same” since his factory was temporarily requisitioned, Hulileh told us. His conclusion? “The conflict is too strong for us to solve without a third party.”

Bethlehem is dominated by a stretch of Israel’s 25-foot-high separation wall topped in this section by watchtowers and barbed wire. Built during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel, street artist Banksy turned the wall into a tourist destination when he and his team spray-painted it with anti-war imagery—a practice since taken up by other provocateur artists.

Our group toured the multimedia museum that tells (one side of) the story of the barrier inside the nearby Walled Off Hotel, which was founded and financed by Banksy. I pressed “play” on my audio

guide to hear a recorded phone message that the Israel Defense Forces typically deploy in the strategy called “roof knocking,” when they warn of an impending demolition of a civilian building. “You have five minutes to leave before we bomb,” I heard on my headset.

Back in israel the next morning, I asked Yaniv for context about life during the fraught period between 2000 and 2005, when 887 Israeli civilians were killed in terrorist attacks. He recalled being about a dozen feet from a Tel Aviv bus that exploded. “I saw it with my own eyes,” he said. “People on it became soup. It was terrifying, unbearable.”

Our Jerusalem stops at the Kotel and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, left me feeling viscerally connected to my parents. I felt them urging me forward.

Forward meant traveling to Gush Etzion, a bloc of 20-plus Jewish communities in Area C that is home to around 70,000 Jews. Bob Lang, head of Gush Etzion’s Religious Council, offered cookies and commentary in his home in Efrat, one of the largest Jewish cities in the area. Jews purchased land here in 1927 but were thrice driven out by Arab violence until Israel regained control in 1967 after the

Six-Day War. While acknowledging that walls and barriers are not the road to peace, Lang doesn’t foresee change “while Arab leaders teach that killing Jews is a good thing.”

If Hulileh and Lang exuded varying degrees of hopelessness, our next speakers, who met with us at the Holy Land Hotel in Jerusalem, shone a flashlight beam into inky darkness. Osama Eliwat and Elie Avidor represented Combatants for Peace, a movement composed of former fighters on both sides of the conflict.

Raised in East Jerusalem, Eliwat’s first encounter with Jews was watching Israeli soldiers beat his father. At 14, he began throwing stones and hopping on rooftops to spraypaint “Free Palestine.” After twice being arrested and released by Israeli authorities, in 2010, Eliwat accompanied friends to a meeting for peace activists. There he met Israelis who, he recounted, “believed I was human and deserved rights.” It was the first time he heard about the Holocaust. “They said, ‘I hear your pain, and I have stories, too.’ ”

This proved to be his turning point. He attended more meetings and came to believe that “the main source of the

A warning for Israeli citizens and other travelers

conflict is we don’t know each other.” He said that he decided “to dig deep, to fully understand the narrative and fears of Israeli Jews.” At age 35, this quest led to his first plane ride, to visit Auschwitz.

Avidor fought with the IDF in the Golan Heights. “It felt good,” he said of his army service. “I was protecting my family.” After the army, he lived in North America for 20 years. When he returned to his homeland, his perspective had changed. In 2016, he accompanied a friend to the annual Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Day Ceremony, sponsored by Combatants for Peace and The Parents Circle, an organization of over 600 bereaved families on both sides. “For 90 minutes I cried, listen-

ing to everyone’s stories,” Avidor recalled.

“People tell me I hate Jews and love Arabs,” he said about his involvement with Combatants for Peace. But, he added, “I do this work because I love my country.”

Our group’s final evening together offered a partial answer to a question Yaniv had posed days earlier: “How do we find a way to communicate without yelling?”

In a modest home in the West Bank town of Al-Eizariya in Area C, our host Mustafa Abu Sarah—brother of MEJDI co-founder Aziz Abu Sarah— served the classic Arab chicken dish of maqluba (upside down). The entrée is so named because the pot of stewed chicken, spiced rice and vegetables is

Designed for Celebration

flipped onto a large serving plate.

We worked off calories by dancing to the darbuka and lute-enhanced stylings of two members of Wast El Tarik, an Israeli-Palestinian musical ensemble.

Back on the bus, our group joyously warbled through a medley of friendship-centric songs. As the last notes of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” faded, our hotel came into view. While our lives would soon physically diverge, 14 souls had been forever transformed by a vision of what is possible.

Sherry Amatenstein is a New York based psychotherapist, author, anthologist and journalist who has written for many publications, including Tablet, New York, Better Homes and Gardens and AARP’s The Ethel

Shown: Polished Surface Shofar (Small); “Land of Milk and Honey” Serving Set by Yaara (honey spoon not included); Glossy White Candlesticks by Alejandra Design Under the auspices of the Jewish Theological Seminary

Shabbat as an Organizing Principle

How food and tradition nurture Jewish identity

By Adeena Sussman

When i began thinking about a theme for my next cookbook, I sought a subject that would expand on those that I explored in my last one, Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen, which was published in 2019. Having recently made aliyah, I had used that book as an opportunity to immerse myself in the diversity of the Jewish culinary experience in my adopted homeland. I had wanted

Grandma Mildred’s Fruit Compote

Serves 6

1 large lemon

2 3/4 cups water

1 cup dry white wine

2/3 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

3/4 cup pitted, dried apricots (about 4 ounces)

3/4 cup pitted prunes (about 4 1/2 ounces)

1/4 cup golden raisins (1 1/2 ounces)

1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

2 tablespoons thinly sliced crystallized ginger

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

to confirm the central role that eating plays in everyday life here and amplify the ways that food helped deepen my relationship to Israel since moving to Tel Aviv in 2017.

Around the same time that I was brainstorming my next book project, I came across a quote from the 20th-century Russian Jewish Zionist writer Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, who became better known by his Hebrew name, Ahad Ha’am: “More

1. Use a Y-peeler to peel thick strips of zest from the lemon; place them in a medium saucepan. Juice the lemon and reserve the juice (you should have 3 tablespoons). To the saucepan with the zest strips, add the water, wine, sugar and cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to help the sugar dissolve, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until thickened slightly, 10 minutes.

2. Add the apricots, prunes, raisins and fresh and crystallized gingers, then return to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer gently until the fruit plumps, but doesn’t fall apart, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice (or more to taste), the vanilla and salt.

than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

And so it came to be that Shabbat essentially chose me as the organizing principle for my brand-new cookbook, Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Table to Yours. Its pages are filled with 130 recipes for weekend cooking, some traditional and many with my own spin. It is the conclusion of a three-year journey that took me around Israel to cook with locals and pass on their expertise and stories to you. Meals are often the focus of Shabbat, and in the book, I try to paint a rich picture of the many ways it is observed in Israel, from late-night food crawls through the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Bnei Brak on Thursdays to Saturday morning dairy brunches hosted by secular Jews.

It might be a stretch to characterize

3. Chill the compote for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours; as it chills, the liquid will thicken slightly and the flavor will deepen.

4. Remove the cinnamon stick

and divide the fruit and liquid among bowls. (Discard the lemon peels if you like, or enjoy eating them since they’re semi-candied after cooking.) Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.

RECIPES FROM ‘SHABBAT’ BY ADEENA SUSSMAN, PUBLISHED BY AVERY, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN PUBLISHING GROUP, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, LLC. COPYRIGHT @ 2023 BY ADEENA SUSSMAN

Fig & Pomegranate Brisket

Serves 8 to 10

1 5-pound brisket with a good amount of fat

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 large onions, thinly sliced (6 cups)

2 tablespoons all-purpose or gluten-free flour

10 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 cups dry white wine

1 1/2 cups beef or chicken broth

1/3 cup pomegranate molasses

4 dried figs, chopped

1/4 cup honey

1 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes

6 fresh figs, quartered

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds Mint leaves, for garnish

1. Preheat the oven to 300°.

2. Arrange the brisket on a large plate and season it generously on all sides with 1 tablespoon of the salt and 1 teaspoon of the pepper. In a large, heavy Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat until very hot but not smoking. Add the brisket (fattier side down, if there is one) and sear until deeply browned and crisped in parts, 6 to 7 minutes. Carefully flip the brisket and sear for another 6 minutes, then, if they’re thick enough, sear each of the narrow sides, standing up the brisket,

an age-old tradition as a “trend,” but The New York Times recently reported how young, often secular Jews in the United States are turning to Shabbat dinner as a way to build community. And by its own accounting, OneTable—an outreach organization aiming to keep younger Jews connected to their culture by sponsoring Shabbat dinners—recently facilitated its 100,000th meal.

The power of Shabbat meals has never been lost on me, and this project afforded me a chance to reach back into my personal

if possible, 3 minutes per side. Remove to a plate, leaving any fat and juices in the pan.

3. Add the onions and flour and cook, stirring occasionally, until the flour is absorbed, 1 minute, then add the garlic and tomato paste and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions begin to soften, 5 minutes. Add the wine, raise the heat to high, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer until the wine reduces by half, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the broth, pomegranate molasses, dried figs, honey, vinegar, cumin, red pepper flakes and the remaining 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.

4. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer and gently lower the brisket back into the Dutch oven, spooning some of the sauce and onions over the brisket. Cover the brisket with a piece of parchment paper (this will prevent the acid in the sauce from interacting with the foil), seal the roasting pan tightly with

foil and cook in the oven until the brisket is tender, 4 to 4 1/2 hours. Remove from the oven, unseal slightly, then let the brisket come to room temperature, about 1 hour.

5. If you have time, refrigerate the brisket overnight, then uncover it and remove and discard the congealed fat. Remove the brisket from the sauce and slice it against the grain into 1/4 -inchthick slices. Heat the sauce in the roasting pan or another pot over medium-high heat, until boiling. Lower the heat and simmer until the sauce thickens to your liking, 10 to 15 minutes. Nestle the sliced brisket back in the sauce, cover with foil, and warm gently in a 200° oven until everything is heated through, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

6. To serve, transfer the brisket and sauce to a platter, season with salt and pepper, and garnish with fresh figs, pomegranate seeds and mint leaves. If you can’t find fresh figs, garnish with more pomegranate seeds.

archive of family recipes, traditions and memories to reinforce how formative Shabbat was, and continues to be, to my own Jewish identity.

Growing up Modern Orthodox in Palo Alto, Calif., a place where

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there were few other Jews like me, Shabbat was a family oasis. It was a 24-hour bubble where my sister, Sharon, and I had the undivided attention of our busy parents in the absence of television, shopping, phone calls or trips to the mall.

My late mother, Steffi, organized her entire week around planning and executing the Shabbat meals that would not only nourish us, but bond our family and form the basis for rituals that we would carry forward into the next generation. As a working mom, her delicious food was prepared early in the morning and late at night, so I’d often wake up to the aroma of roasted chicken with schmaltzy onions (dubbed My Mother’s Shabbat Chicken in my new book) or a tin of brownies cooling on the stove.

Since store-bought challah was hard to come by, we made our own, a process that gave me a lifelong comfort level with handling dough. Although my challah recipe in Sababa, made with olive oil and honey, has been popular, for this book, I created a simpler version, Golden Challah, using vegetable oil and sugar.

Once the sun went down, there were blessings over candles, wine and challah, Shabbat zemirot (songs) we came to know by heart and often guests ranging from Nobel Prize winners to unhoused people my father would invite home from shul. (The Sussmans of Palo Alto had one of the very few kosher homes in town, so everyone found their way to us.) My parents’ Shabbat table was an object lesson in food, family and menshlichkeit all in one.

As an adult, I have drifted from Orthodox practice, but I have never strayed far from my core Jewish identity. Indeed, I have made a career out of codifying the culinary traditions that define it. For Shabbat, I spent

MAGAZINE DISCUSSION

Join us on Thursday, September 21 at 7 PM ET for an in-depth conversation about Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Table to Yours with Adeena Sussman, who will share the stories behind the research and writing of her new book as well as holiday menu suggestions. Register for the virtual event with this QR code or online at hadassahmagazine.org

Adeena Sussman

time in the home of a Bukharan Jewish woman, Doris Haimov, who made aliyah from Uzbekistan at age 16 and married just one year later. Her delicate, meat-filled dushpara dumplings rival the best Michelin-starred pasta I’ve tasted. Idit Katz, whose mother hailed from Calcutta, shared her family’s recipe for an onion-smothered curry that will challenge your ideas of what that Indian dish can be.

And Fanta Prada, a dear friend whose Ethiopian restaurant, Balinjera, celebrates her African-Jewish culture, serves the best berbere-laced stews in Tel Aviv. Fanta told me stories of how her relatives trekked thousands of miles by foot to reach Israel, with some dying along the way. As she taught me how to make dabo, a spice-infused bread that’s at

the centerpiece of Ethiopian Shabbat tables, I marveled at how the joy of baking a celebratory loaf could provide healing comfort from painful memories.

In my own experience, marrying my husband, Jay Shofet, added richness to my Shabbat table. Sometimes we opt for a dairy Shabbat lunch, serving a big salad topped with feta and roasted vegetables, a cold yogurt soup studded with chickpeas and tiny loaves of pull-apart challah breadsticks (see Pull-Apart Challah Sticks in Shabbat). Hosting meals has taken on new meaning with the addition of Jay’s children and our grandchildren at the table. Our gaggle of friends has expanded to encompass his, mine and the new circle we’ve created, which now

includes my stepmother and father, Bette and Stan Sussman, who made aliyah recently and live in Jerusalem.

At this time of year, I like to serve a sweet and tangy brisket that pays homage to my mother’s more classic version (Steffi’s Brisket in Shabbat), but with an Israeli twist courtesy of pomegranates and figs. And for dessert, I often make my Grandma Mildred’s Fruit Compote, which I’ve jazzed up with dry white wine, fresh ginger and a splash of lemon juice. Both dishes keep well, can be made in advance and will enhance a Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah table.

Adeena Sussman is the author of the just-published Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Kitchen to Yours, and Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen She lives in Tel Aviv.

Between Alienation and Acceptance

Fusing a childhood in the FSU with an Israeli adulthood through art |

By Karen Chernick

The fish that tali ratzker is holding in her mouth in the photograph Dead Sea is clearly out of water, and, in many ways, so is the Ukrainian-born photographer herself.

In the image, Ratzker wears traditional Ukrainian clothes—colorful garb she remembers from her childhood in the city of Mariupol—and stands on the shores of the Dead Sea. The body of water has such high salinity that it’s largely uninhabitable, even to the herring clenched between her teeth. Her mother, Ella, stands beside her wearing a crown strewn with bulbs of garlic and rye bread. She is handing her daughter a salt container of Melech Ha’aretz, salt of the earth, a brand found in most Israeli homes.

While Ratzker and her mom are unmistakably posing in Israel, they are just as obviously plucked from elsewhere—women removed from their native home and unsure how to thrive in their new environment.

This acerbic image is part of Ratzker’s ongoing series of self-portraits—many of them taken with her mother—called “Potatoes in Uniform,” after a beloved Soviet dish in which potatoes are cooked with their skins. She started the series, available to view on her Instagram page, in 2021 to describe the tension between her Ukrainian and Israeli identities.

“The connection between the cultural place of my origins and the ethnic place where I grew up and its combination with Israeli culture interests me very much,” said Ratzker, who made aliyah with her mother in 2000, at age 12, and now lives in the central Israeli town of Shoham.

Although Ratzker is a relative newcomer to the arts scene, she is part of a cohort of Israeli female artists born in the former Soviet Union (FSU) that includes fellow photographer Vera Vladimirsky and acclaimed painters Zoya Cherkassky and Anna Lukashevsky. All in their 30s and 40s, these artists are fusing their

FSU backgrounds with their Israeli identities in their artistic endeavors, exploring themes of alienation and acceptance, birthplace and adopted homeland. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, their artworks have gained greater attention in Israel through museum exhibits, art festivals and gallery showings.

Indeed, according to Raz Samira, deputy director and chief curator of the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, who also curated an exhibit of Vladimirsky’s work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, “the whole subject of wandering, transitions, has become the hottest subject there is, especially over the past five years—for political reasons, for personal reasons.”

This attention represents a coming of age of sorts for the artists, who were part of the large wave of nearly 1 million Soviet émigrés who came to Israel in the 1990s through the early 2000s, the largest influx of immigrants to Israel since the mid-1950s.

For Ratzker, Cherkassky, Lukashevsky and Vladimirsky, their formative experiences are divided between the cities and towns where they spent their early years and the nation where they became adults. They identify with both places but aren’t wholly of either.

This split reality is evident in often ironic paintings and drawings by Kyiv-born Cherkassky, who

lives in Ramat Gan. In one, titled We Eat Russian Lard, a counter displays deli meats right next to cheeses, all labeled in Russian alongside slightly smaller text in Hebrew and prices in shekels. This piece, along with others capturing her recollections of Kyiv and transition from Ukraine to Israel, was featured in a 2018 solo exhi-

FROM ‘GENERATIONS’ TO...TELEVISION

Every time Jewish Life Television host and genealogy buff Brad Pomerance comments on Jewish genealogy on social media, those posts “explode,” he said, into impassioned online conversations.

So when Jack Kliger, the president of the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City, suggested they collaborate on a television series about Jewish genealogy, Pomerance knew there would be an audience. The result is this fall’s Generations, an unscripted Jewish genealogy-themed television series featuring Jewish celebrities and personalities. The show will bring together JLTV’s production resources with the research power of the museum and its affiliate JewishGen, the world’s largest online repository of Jewish ancestry records.

Viewers who devour celebrity heritage programs like Finding Your Roots , the PBS program featuring Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., and NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? can soon tune into JLTV to see Jewish actors Camryn Manheim and her son, Milo Manheim, uncover their own roots in the premiere episode of Generations .

Meanwhile, amateur genealogists will be able to peruse

bition at the Israel Museum, titled “Pravda” (truth, in Russian).

Lukashevsky, who lives in Haifa and was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, is known for her nuanced portraits. Her oil-on-canvas series “Soviet Haifa,” displayed at the Museum of Bat Yam in a major 2016 group show, “The Kids Want Communism,” depicts

JewishGen’s millions of records as well as the museum’s databases and resources at the new Peter and Mary Kalikow Jewish Genealogy Research Center at the Museum of Jewish Heritage that is slated to open later this year. The center will include computer kiosks to access the resources and printed material, such as Yizkor books from various communities. Volunteers and experts will be onsite to help visitors.

Pomerance, who will host Gen erations, is working on assembling the lineup for future broadcasts, which, he said, will include an ethnically diverse lineup of prominent Jews. The Los Angeles producer didn’t have to look far for his first guest: Milo had been a grade-school classmate of his own daughter, and Camryn reached out when she heard a fellow parent was doing a show on genealogy.

“My siblings and cousins have uncovered extraordinary things about our family’s history,” said the actress, 62, who won an Emmy for The Practice and currently stars in the Law & Order reboot. “But the program’s vast network of resources will provide a deeper understanding. Now we’ll pass it down to the younger generation, who’ll bring fresh perspective and curiosity.”

For his part, Milo said he relished filming alongside his grandmother, Sylvia Manheim, and uncle, law professor Karl Manheim.

FSU immigrants looking out of place in classic Israeli settings. The painting In the Market, for example, shows a woman in a brown cardigan, too warm for the Israeli climate, shopping for lemons at a shuk. The artist is currently working on a new series of portraits of immigrants and refugees to Israel. Both Cherkassky and

“I’ve always wanted to spend more time with my bubbe and take a deep dive into family history,” said the actor, 22, who plays one of the leads in Disney Channel’s Zombies series. He was raised with a strong connection to his Jewish heritage and celebrated a non-traditional bar mitzvah at Los Angeles’s Sholem Community, a secular and progressive Jewish educational and cultural institution. “Nothing makes me feel more connected to Judaism than spending time with my family.”

Pomerance wouldn’t reveal many details, but he did share that the Manheims’ story, which follows the family from Poland to New York to California, “has a lot of twists and turns.” Mother and son will also be surprised onscreen with newly uncovered artifacts, the host said. Indeed, Generations aims to distinguish itself partly through an emphasis on objects, like a tallit, to help tell family stories.

“We’ll paint a picture of Jewish life in a way that just hasn’t been done on other programs,” he said.

The development of the series is indicative of the way Jewish genealogy

engages internet sleuths, who trade research tips on JewishGen forums and Facebook groups.

Karen Franklin, JewishGen’s board co-chair and Generations ’ chief researcher, recruited nearly 30 online volunteers to uncover details of the Manheim ancestry.

The familial histories of featured celebrities “are vehicles to tell the larger story of Jewish families,” said Pomerance.

Yet while Jews are the anticipated viewers for a program airing on one of North America’s largest 24/7 Jewish television networks, “the audience is everyone,” Pomerance said. “These are human stories that happen to be about people of the Jewish faith.”

—Hilary Danailova

Hilary Danailova writes about travel, culture, politics and lifestyle for numerous publications.

Mother and son duo, Camryn and Milo Manheim

ARTS

Lukashevsky’s works can be seen on their social media pages and through the Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv.

The palpable humor in Cherkassky’s paintings is also present in an untitled 2022 photograph by Ratzker from “Potatoes in Uniform.” The image shows Ratzker, once again in ornate Ukrainian dress, behind a row of pita bread hung from a laundry line, reminiscent of the way she had seen laundry strung outside apartment buildings in Mariupol. However, this laundry line is placed between two trees in a field, adding a note of surrealism.

Ratzker had not realized that she had attached the line to an iconic Israeli tree, the eucalyptus, until after the photo was displayed at the

annual PHOTO

IS:RAEL festival last winter, along with other pieces from her series.

“People came up to me and said, ‘What a wonderful thought, you photographed yourself in this traditional dress in such an Israeli field,’ ” recalled Ratzker. “And I had no idea.”

The photographic meditations on memories and the immigrant experience by Tel Aviv-based Vera Vladimirsky focus not on individuals but on objects, including buildings and apartments. Yet like Ratzker, her work has a sur-

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real touch. She merges photographs she has taken in different spaces into photo collages, sometimes printing an image then re-photographing it in another place.

The collages are both disorienting and captivating, creating optical illusions that offer glimpses into many places at once. The artworks reflect the disorientation that the artist said she experienced after leaving her

A collage from Vera Vladimirsky’s series ‘The Last Apartment’

native Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1991 at the age of 7.

This is especially true in her series “The Last Apartment,” eight collages that combine images from 25 different places she once called home that she later re-photographed in her current apartment. In one image from the series, for example, a seemingly typical Israeli kitchen includes a cabinet and countertop that, upon closer look, is the entrance to a building.

“I explored my personal biography by returning to all the apartments in which I lived throughout my life and photographed them as they were occupied by other people,” Vladimirsky said. In the collages, the distinctions between her past and present are flattened. Some of her images are like a child’s dollhouse, with mismatched couches, balconies and floors all squeezed into one space.

Vladimirsky is the recipient of the 2021 Lauren and Mitchel Presser Photography Award for Young Israeli Artist, which included a recent solo exhibition, “Sand Wall,” at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The exhibition was already in the planning stages when Russia invaded Ukraine. The outbreak of war, however, inspired a new series, “Surface and the Deepest Depths,” in which Vladimirsky merges photos she took of the interior of her grandmother’s home in Ukraine’s Donbas region during visits in 2012 and 2015. The series was put together after her grandmother had fled “and the house was abandoned. Its condition is unknown,” she said. It was “a way to encounter the house again and my childhood memories, while simultaneously saying goodbye to it.”

While the war added urgency to Vladimirsky’s Tel Aviv exhibit, Raz Samira, the show’s curator, believes that her works have a universal and timeless quality. “Even someone whose parents made aliyah in the 1950s can relate to this subject matter,” she said. “We are a country of immigrants.”

Ratzker has had a similar response to her photographs from both native Israelis and immigrants. “Many people could relate—even if they didn’t make aliyah in the last 20 years,” she said. “I really hope that we all continue to tell this story.”

Karen Chernick is an art historian and writer living in Tel Aviv who specializes in arts, culture, food and travel.

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For more information, visit www.storiesthatlive.org

49 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2023 I I hadassahmagazine.org

A Poignant Love Story in the Shadow of War, Anti-Semitism & Racism.

“ A captivating novel based on a true story. e plot provides an eye-opening explanation of the era’s anti-Semitic attitudes.”

– BOOKLIFE PRIZE

Home front, 1943 – a proud, smalltown Jewish girl and a complex Jewish soldier from Brooklyn with horrific childhood memories of another war - Two strangers caught up in the desperation of a country fighting a war to preserve democracy abroad but experiencing deep-seated hate and intolerance at home.

“ A historically accurate and intimate portrait of people scarred by war and intolerance and their perseverance during a critical time in American history.” – BOOKTRIB

A Witness to Her Story

Documenting

When i started working with Hannah Pick-Goslar on her memoir, published recently as My Friend Anne Frank (Little, Brown Spark), almost 90 years had passed since she first met a small-framed girl with dark shiny hair—and a lot to say—named Anne Frank.

The first time they glimpsed one another, as Hannah described it, was at a corner grocery store in the spring of 1934. Anne was 4 and Hannah, six months older, already 5. Clinging to their mother’s skirts, they exchanged shy glances, both of them newly arrived German Jewish refugees to the Netherlands who didn’t know a word of Dutch or anyone else their age. The two became neighbors and close friends, until Anne and her family went into hiding.

It was clear that the time left to collect Hannah’s recollections was short. At 93, Hannah was in delicate health, though her mind was

sharp and full of gripping memories to share. We were starting our interviews in spring 2022, when Covid was still a threat. On the first day I was scheduled to interview her in her Jerusalem apartment, I woke up feeling sniffly. I took a Covid test: positive. So we began our interviews by Zoom, she sitting in the living room of her garden apartment in Jerusalem, me at my dining room table in Tel Aviv. We’d lift our cups of tea in greeting toward the screen and settle down to unpack the past.

I tried to push away my anxieties. How could we develop a rapport through the computer screen, and later, in person, through a mask and on opposite ends of a table? How would I reach the level of intimacy and immediacy I needed to help bring Hannah’s story to life? How could I help her delve more deeply into those long-ago memories, some of them the most traumatic of her life?

The memories we discussed were

By Dina Kraft

of her experiences as a girl growing up under Nazi occupation, then as a survivor of the horrors and degradations of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and, finally, the rebuilding of her life in Jerusalem, where she immigrated in 1947, after her parents, grandparents and close friends were murdered in the Holocaust.

Despite my fears, we quickly found our footing. I appreciated Hannah’s deep intelligence, dry wit and warmth. She soon felt like a new friend.

Hannah began sharing her experiences publicly in 1957 at the behest of Otto Frank, Anne’s father. The two had connected after the war, after he had discovered her name on a list of camp survivors and traveled eight hours to find her at a hospital in Maastricht, in the Netherlands, where Hannah was recovering from her ordeal in BergenBelsen.

Till her last days, she referred to

the memories of a woman who grew up with Anne Frank |

Hannah Pick-Goslar holding a picture of her childhood friend

him as she did when she was a girl: Mr. Frank. At that time in the 1950s, she was one of the few survivors talking about her experiences. By then, Anne’s diary, which was first published in Dutch in 1947, had become an international sensation, and its adaption into a hit Broadway play gave it even more reach.

For Hannah, sharing her story, first as a public speaker and later, in the twilight of her life, as a memoirist, was a decision to tell the story Anne had not lived to tell, that of Nazi persecution beyond the confines of the cramped attic apartment. Persecution that happened, as Hannah often said, “only because we were Jews.”

Returning to those difficult times during our interviews was not easy for Hannah. She had to confront painful memories, including the death of her mother in childbirth (the baby was stillborn) just months before the family was deported. They were forced from their home in Amsterdam—unlike the Franks, they did not go into hiding—to Westerbork, the transit camp on the damp and boggy Dutch-German border. Jews from the Netherlands were sent there, a purgatory of sorts ahead of transport “East.” No one knew exactly what awaited in the “East,” but what she and the others in the camp did know was that no one who left ever sent letters back or returned.

Sometimes when Hannah and I would sit together and I’d prod her for yet another detail or scene, she’d shrug and ask, “Who is going to find this interesting?”

Sadly, she did not live to learn the answer. She died last October, a few

weeks shy of her 94th birthday, while I was still writing. But the story she left behind is now being read around the world, written up in newspapers, spoken about on podcasts and even making The New York Times bestseller list.

The Anne Frank story has long coattails, and people are eager to hear about her from another perspective. And while most of us know Anne from inside the secret annex, we know less about the life that came before—the family life, the deep connections with friends and neighbors like Hannah, who did briefly see Anne just once in Bergen-Belsen, and the other German Jewish refugees in their community. Some reviewers have even called My Friend Anne Frank the “sequel” to the diary. Its reach is beyond anything either of us could have ever imagined sitting over our cups of tea, her speaking, me listening. It was a challenging task, a beautiful task—me listening and bearing witness to her words and, in the process, to paraphrase Elie Wiesel, becoming one, too.

Dina Kraft is opinion editor at Haaretz English and co-host of the podcast Groundwork, about Israelis and Palestinians working to change the status quo.

SPIRITUALITY ROUNDUP: INSPIRING BOOKS FOR HIGH HOLIDAY READING

By Leah Finkelshteyn

Living Fully: Keys to Spiritual Growth and Happiness

By Daniel A. Kripper. Translated by Nadia Hlebowitch (Hadassah New Orleans)

Kripper, an educator, life coach and rabbi at Temple Shalom, a Conservative congregation in Middletown, R.I., shares insights into what he calls the “wide-ranging moments in life,

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whether happy occasions or moments of crisis or regret.” In nine chapters that delve into different themes, including gratefulness, mastering fear of change and happiness, the Buenos Aires-born rabbi weaves together anecdotes and thought-provoking quotes. The result is a cornucopia of scholarly musings on each theme from both Jews and non-Jews, with every chapter concluding with practical tips, activities, questions and

visualizations for further exploration.

Yom Kippur and its leitmotifs of apology and repentance are naturally highlighted in the section on forgiveness. Both accepting and offering apologies for wrongdoings are necessary to beginning the New Year “free from the burden of negative feelings,” Kripper writes. Through quotes from Maimonides, Rabbi Yosef Cairo and the Kabbalah, he describes traditional Jewish injunctions and understandings around repentance and apologies. He also explores the limits of forgiveness, asking readers how, and if, they would forgive a terrorist or those who attempted genocide.

Forgiveness, the rabbi notes, is “a virtue that all religions have emphasized, each in its own way, highlighting its benefits both emotional and spiritual.” Our task, he writes, is to practice forgiveness— and indeed all the attributes explored in Living Fully—each day, using contemporary thought and “drawing on the wisdom of ancient texts.”

Originally published in Spanish, the English translation and paperback publication of Living Fully was a project of Hadassah New Orleans.

Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole

By Julia Watts Belser (Beacon)

In the second chapter of her new book, Belser, a rabbi, disability activist and Jewish scholar, describes an anecdote she once read: A teacher in a religious school promised a Deaf child that “One day, in the world to come, you’ll be able to hear.”

The child looked at the teacher and replied, “No. In the world to come, God will sign.”

Taken from an essay by Rabbi

Margaret Moers Wenig, a senior lecturer at Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion, the story speaks to the heart of Loving Our Own Bones. The book asks for the complete reframing of disability from a source of shame that must be hidden to a marker of identity to be explored.

According to Belser, a professor of Jewish studies in the theology department at Georgetown University, religious communities have “tended to treat disability as a problem to be solved, rather than a perspective to be embraced.” Utilizing personal anecdotes as well as scholarly examination of Jewish (and some Christian) texts and traditions, she persuasively argues that discussing disability can offer insights into the “textures and tenor of spiritual life.”

After all, Belser notes, disability is everywhere in the Torah. Moshe stutters. Isaac becomes blind. Jacob’s wrestling with an angel leaves him lame. In separate chapters, she discusses these examples and others, describing how each has impacted the lives of those with disabilities, either by providing an example to follow and uphold or as a tool of erasure and marginalization.

Moses’ stutter didn’t prevent him from being a leader, yet a midrash insists that he had been “healed” through the learning of Torah before speaking to all of Israel in the desert—a perspective that Belser rejects.

“When I read the Book of Deuteronomy, I hear him speaking in my heart,” she writes. “I hear him stutter through the long, beautiful recitation of his own life’s story. I hear

him stutter without flinching. I hear him stutter without shame.”

Belser, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, finds significant personal meaning in the first chapter of the biblical book of Ezekiel. She describes the sudden sense of kinship she felt several year ago when reading of Ezekiel’s vision of God as a radiant fire seated on a chariot held by four angelic creatures with fused legs and wheels, their “wheels within wheels,” according to the text, “gleamed like beryl.”

Like her, she writes, “God has wheels.” The joy, satisfaction and freedom she finds in her own wheelchair is reflected in the Torah itself.

Days Are Coming: A Journey Through the Jewish Year

By Sivan Rahav Meir. Translated by Yehoshua Siskin (Maggid)

Using the Hebrew months as her guide, Israeli journalist and popular television and radio personality Rahav-Meir takes readers through the Jewish year.

Known for her lectures and videos on the weekly Torah portion, Rahav-Meir uses that same folksy, conversational tone to discuss Jewish and Israeli holidays, events and even yahrzeits of Jewish luminaries—from Rav Kook, in the Hebrew month of Elul, to the matriarch Rachel, commemorated in Heshvan.

“The cycle of the Jewish year is a journey, taking us through a process of growth,” she writes in her introduction. “In order to truly appreciate the gifts these holidays bring, we need to know as much as possible about them.”

The book starts with Elul, the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah and usually coincides with September. The section includes meditations on

teshuvah, repentance, as well as a description of Israeli singer Naomi Shemer’s popular back-to-school children’s song “Shalom, Kita Alef” (“Hello, First Grade”). The song describes a young child leaving his or her mother to go to school: “And mother is already standing there, like Yocheved or Miriam in the reeds. The breeze is singing, ‘A great journey begins today’; shalom, first grade.”

According to Rahav-Meir, Shemer’s tune is not just about school, books, pencils or the “usual threats of teachers’ strikes” in Israel. The singer is connecting to the generations of Jewish mothers who have watched their young children venture forth to new experiences with hope and trepidation.

These moments of insight into Israeli culture are woven throughout the book, as are mentions of the broad diversity of Jews in Israel. Included are discussions of Sigd, a day celebrated in Heshvan for “fasting, purification and renewal” by the Ethiopian community, and the Moroccan Mimouna, the day after Passover during the month of Nissan. Days Are Coming describes the commemoration of Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim as well as Tu B’Av and International Women’s Day, all present on the Israeli calendar. Also included are lesser-known commemorations, such as the seventh of Adar, designated as the day to remember all the fallen Israel Defense Forces soldiers whose bodies were never recovered.

Each entry captures a point on the calendar, an event or a thought

ON YOUR SHELF: START THE NEW YEAR WITH COMPELLING JEWISH READS

By Sandee Brawarsky

Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life

by Nancy Ludmerer (WTAW Press)

In this novella, Ludmerer captures the voice and deep intellect of Sarra Copia, a 17th century Jewish woman living in the confines of the Venice Ghetto. Locked inside the gates every evening, Sarra finds intellectual freedom in following her own mind, leading salons that include Christians, writing poetry and corresponding with others beyond the ghetto walls. The author was inspired to write a story based on the reallife Sarra after discovering her tombstone in the Jewish cemetery on the Lido.

18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18

Languages edited by Nora Gold (Cherry Orchard Books)

For Gold, the founding editor of Jew ishFiction.net , a Jewish story is one that expresses Jewish identity in some dimension and relates to the Jewish experience. Here, she assembles 18 stories and novel excerpts translated from Hungarian, Croatian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Portuguese, Greek, Danish and other languages and publishes them in English for the first time. The backgrounds of the contributors vary widely (some stories, like those of Elie Wiesel and S.Y. Agnon, are published posthumously) and so do the stories’ content and styles.

I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)

In her signature style, best-selling author and New Yorker cartoonist Chast takes on the mystery of dreams. All her life, she writes, she has wondered about “this mishmash of stuff that projected itself inside my head like my own weird theater.” She’s funny, whimsical and poignant as she draws, in full color, recurring dreams of high school (“not this again”), celebrity cameos, dentist dreams,

nocturnal cartoon ideas, nightmares and more and ponders the interpretations of Freud and others.

The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren

(Viking)

An award-winning journalist specializing in the American West, Clarren does extensive research on the tangled connections between the Lakota Nation and immigrant Jews who settled in the West, including her own great-great-grandparents. Her ancestors, who fled antisemitism in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, had a homestead in South Dakota. Their immigrant success story was staged on what had been Lakota land, taken by the American government. Clarren has much empathy for the Lakota and their legacy of loss—of land, culture and resources—and has much to say about Jewish responsibility, atonement and justice.

Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family by Daniel

Finkelstein (Doubleday)

A weekly political columnist for The Times , a British daily, Finkelstein unfolds the dramatic and compelling stories of his mother and father and their experience of persecution—including concentration camps and the gulag—resistance and survival in World War II. Theirs are multi-layered stories of transcendence of unspeakable horrors. This is both an intimate family story and a historical account, beautifully told.

Sandee Brawarsky is a longtime columnist in the Jewish book world as well as an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently of 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.

that resonates, touching on topics from love and gratitude to resilience and faith. Meir-Rahav, who is Orthodox, draws upon traditional Jewish sources and texts for many of her anecdotes. She also includes the voices of contemporary female schol-

ars—Rabbanit Chana Henkin, Yael Ziegler and others—who have broken boundaries in Orthodox Jewish communities.

Go to hadassahmagazine.org/books for more nonfiction reviews as well as a look at children’s books for the fall Jewish holidays.

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VA: A financial statement of the organization is available from the State Division of Consumer Affairs in the Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, P.O. Box 1163, Richmond, VA 23218, Phone #1 (804) 786-1343, upon request. WA: Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc., Hadassah Medical Relief Association, Inc. and The Hadassah Foundation, Inc. are registered with the Washington Secretary of State. Financial disclosure information is available from the Secretary of State by calling 800-332-GIVE (800-332-4483) or visiting www.sos.wa.gov/charities. WV: West Virginia residents may obtain a summary of the registration and financial documents of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. from the Secretary of State, State Capitol, Charleston, WV 25305. WI: A financial statement of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. disclosing assets, liabilities, fund balances, revenue, and expenses for the preceding fiscal year will be provided to any person upon request. ALL STATES: A copy of Hadassah’s latest Financial Report is available by writing to the Hadassah Finance Dept., 40 Wall Street, 8th Floor, New York, New York 10005. REGISTRATION DOES NOT CONSTITUTE OR IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, SANCTION OR RECOMMENDATION BY ANY STATE. Charitable deductions are allowed to the extent provided by law. Hadassah shall have full dominion, control and discretion over all gifts (and shall be under no legal obligation to transfer any portion of a gift to or for the use or benefit of any other entity or organization). All decisions regarding the use of funds for any purpose, or the transfer of funds to or for the benefit of any other entity or organization, shall be subject to the approval of the Board or other governing body of Hadassah. The Hadassah Foundation, Inc. is a supporting organization of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. September 2022

“I remember hosting a broadcast in the news studio,” Rahav-Meir writes, “when one of the commentators said, ‘The elections will be held between Purim and Passover so that the government will be formed by Shavuot.’ ” While electing a functioning government is clearly important, she adds with a touch of irony, for her the mention of that very Jewish time frame was illuminating. “The holidays are not just dates on the calendar. They are our common denominator—our past, present and future.”

Leah Finkelshteyn is senior editor of Hadassah Magazine

FICTION Bessie

By Linda Kass (She Writes Press)

Bess “Bessie” Myerson was the first, and thus far only, Jewish Miss America. Crowned in Atlantic City on September 8, 1945—on the second day of Rosh Hashanah—the whirlwind that surrounded her was extraordinary. World War II had just ended, and a nascent post-Holocaust Jewish world was regrouping.

Author Linda Kass captures that pageant energy and postwar disorientation in Bessie, her impressively researched novel. Focusing largely on Bessie’s early life, Kass hews to chronology while also present-

ing historical context. Bessie grows up in the warm embrace of the Shalom Aleichem Houses community, an apartment complex in the Bronx that housed mostly Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Two things mark her adolescence and young adulthood: She is tall—by the age of 12, she reaches her full height of 5’10”— and she is a gifted pianist.

Music surges through Bessie’s body like a powerful electric current, animating her fingers to play the beautiful, complex works of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. She receives a potentially life changing admission to the High School of Music and Art, but after high school, Bessie’s parents sideline her musical dreams, refusing to allow her to enroll in a conservatory. Instead, she attends Hunter College in Manhattan, forming close bonds with other Jewish girls against the backdrop of war. Somewhat adrift and worried about her prospects after graduating in 1945, Bessie enters the Miss New York City pageant. The contest is a steppingstone to competing for the Miss America title and a $5,000 scholarship.

The road to that title is rife with misogyny and antisemitism, a social reality that Kass seamlessly weaves into her fiction. In one scene, the Miss America pageant director tries to convince Bessie to change her name to something less Jewish. She refuses.

“Maybe it’s the weight of a fivethousand-year-old history,” Kass’s omniscient narrator asserts. “She already feels like she’s losing her sense of who she is, already in a masquerade, marching across stages in bathing suits. Whatever is left of Bessie in this moment, she has to hang on to it. She must keep her name.”

The book describes how, after her win, her public role exposes her to even more Jew hatred—country clubs

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“Shabbat is exactly what it’s supposed to be—a celebration of family recipes and personal revelations, of tradition and dynamism, of classics and sparkling wonder at what’s new and what’s to come.”

—MICHAEL TWITTY, author of Koshersoul and The Cooking Gene

130 DELICIOUS RECIPES that embody the spirit and pleasures of Shabbat, from the bestselling author of Sababa

in the South deny her entry during her Miss America tour, and three of the five pageant sponsors, including Ford and Catalina Swimwear, withdraw their sponsorship. In response,

Bessie signs on to become the face of an Anti-Defamation League campaign, “You Can’t Be Beautiful and Hate.” Here is a platform from which Bessie can advocate for social justice,

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which will become a lifelong calling.

Kass hits her stride in the latter half of the book. Her research comes to a crescendo in her vivid and artful portraits of real-life characters, and especially of Bessie, the woman hailed by her Jewish community as their modern Queen Esther.

—Judy Bolton-Fasman

Judy Bolton-Fasman is the author of Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers, essay anthologies and literary magazines (judyboltonfasman.com)

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

By James McBride (Riverhead)

Pottstown, Pa., an exurb 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is the setting of James McBride’s latest novel. He paints a vivid picture of the community, rooted in the borough’s actual history, describing the lives of its denizens, particularly its Jewish and Black ones who were friends and neighbors in a segregated area called Chicken Hill.

Chicken Hill’s residents face all the indignities that were common to those of racial, religious and ethnic minorities in smalltown America in the 1920s and 1930s, when most of the novel takes place. They don’t have access to adequate plumbing and other municipal services. They are snubbed by the town’s political and economic elite. And they have to endure an annual KKK march whose participants include local civic leaders.

But the author, winner of the

Established in 1931 as The Jewish Braille Institute, an Associate Agency of the Library of Congress serving people of all ages and backgrounds.

National Book Award for fiction for his 2013 novel The Good Lord Bird, is not interested in merely piling on the manifold examples of the discrimination that Jews, Blacks and others, including those with physical and cognitive disabilities, have experienced through the ages. Rather, he wishes to depict the backbone and ingenuity of his Black and Jewish characters as they seek to overcome obstacles in a society that has created systems to thwart their success.

Even more strikingly, McBride demonstrates the power found in cooperation and collaboration—in this case, a Black and Jewish partnership to liberate a hearing-impaired Black teenager being warehoused in Pennhurst, a notorious real-life state facility that was initially called the Eastern State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic. (It was shuttered in 1987.)

In The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, empathy and justice are never in short supply. As McBride writes of Chona, a Jewish store owner, “She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world.”

In his 1995 memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, McBride writes movingly of his own Black and Jewish heritage. In his latest work, he again pays tribute—to those like Chona who move heaven and earth to make things a little bit better for the next generation.

—Robert Nagler Miller

Robert Nagler Miller writes frequently about the arts, literature and Jewish themes from his home near New York City.

THINKING

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Guide to Jewish Literature

Order these books directly through the Hadassah Magazine website! Just go to Hadassahmagazine.org and click on Guide to Jewish Literature.

O N 174TH STREET: THE WORLD OF WILLIE MITTLEMAN

Mel Weiser

Days are bad in the Great Depression of the 1930s. But for little Willie Mittleman and the Mittleman clan in their Bronx, NY neighborhood, life is still good, proving that laughter and love will always be the lifesaving forces to rescue us from adversity and pain. A big-hearted gem. Funny, touching and insightful. For readers of all ages. Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

H IDDEN STAR : FAITH , FAMILY, FUTURE

Ellie Gersten

Estrella Schmitt believed she had the perfect life. She married the man of her dreams, had the ideal job and a loving family. Her world turned upside down when she went home to Pueblo, New Mexico, to say goodbye to her dying abuelita (grandmother) whose last words to her favorite grandchild were Somos Judios, we are Jews. Read the incredible journey Estrella takes to fi nd out what happens.

Available at Iuniverse.com, Amazon and Bookshop.org.

THE CHOICE : A N OVEL OF LOVE , FAITH AND THE TALMUD

Maggie Anton

The award-winning author of Rashi’s Daughters takes characters inspired by Chaim Potok and ages them into young adults in Brooklyn in the mid-1950s. When journalist Hannah Eisin interviews Rabbi Nathan Mandel, a controversial Talmud professor, she persuades him to teach her the mysteries of the text forbidden to women, though it might cost him his job if discovered. Secret meetings and lively discussions bring the two to the edge of a line neither dares to cross, testing their relationships with Judaism and each other.

Maggie is happy to meet with groups or book clubs; contact info on www.TheChoiceNovel.com.

KILL BROTHERS

Steven Moscovitz

Kill Brothers is a pulsepounding, cold-case thriller that delivers page-turning twists and turns, weaving together historical fi ction (World War II) and modern-day DNA analysis. Will NYPD’s Detective Mills murder investigation link him back to Greta Weber’s shocking secret of nearly a century before? From the 1920s Germany to 2018 in Brooklyn, Kill Brothers will keep readers racing through the pages until its mind-bending conclusion. Available on Amazon.com and www.stevendmoscovitz.com.

BUBBIE’S BABY: 15TH ANNIVERSARY E DITION

Elaine Serling

A musical story celebrating and honoring the special relationship between grandparents and a grandchild. This new redesigned hardcover edition features fresh lyrics, a toe-tapping memorable melody and colorful illustrations that mirror moments of joy this special bond brings. Use the digital download code printed inside the book to download the song. Reading, listening and singing together will create memories that will last a lifetime! Available from www.elaineserling.com. 800-457-2157; $19.95 + $3 shipping.

THE COOK AND THE R ABBI: R ECIPES AND STORIES TO CELEBRATE THE J EWISH HOLIDAYS

Susan Simon and Zoe B. Zak

A delicious exploration of the Jewish holidays, with illuminating conversations and meals shared by friends: a rabbi and a cook. James Beard Award–winning author Susan Simon and Rabbi Zoe Zak explore each of the 14 holidays in the Jewish calendar through their history, interpretations, and reimagined traditional recipes. This book is a testament to the resilient versatility of the Jewish people and their traditions. Chag Sameach!

Available on Bookshop.org.

PASSIONS OF THE G RANDE DAME H OTEL

Deby Eisenberg

Compelling historical fi ction. In WWII, The Breakers Hotel became an army hospital where over a dozen babies were born. Passions and fi res will forever change the lives of three women, whose heartrending journeys weave through the timeline of the resort, including Rebecca, an alluring Russian Jewish immigrant in the 1920s, whose fiancé disappears when she follows him to America. Paperback available on Bookshop.org; all formats, including eBook, on Amazon.

PROTECTING PAIGE

Deby Eisenberg

When her enchanting French mother died and her famous uncle became her guardian, Paige discovered the pain and passion in a hidden diary. She learned the Holocaust was part of her story. A captivating saga of a girl’s coming-of-age and a man’s quest for a lost love. A rich tapestry, spanning three generations. Paperback available on Bookshop.org; all formats, including eBook, Audible on Amazon.

A R ABBI’S JOURNEY: ROADS TAKEN LESSONS LEARNED, STORIES FROM AN U NCONVENTIONAL R ABBI’S CAREER

Allan C. Tu s, D.Min. Rabbi Tu s reveals his unconventional route to the rabbinate, heartwarming moments with congregants, his many social action projects, and the complicated realm of “shul politics,” during his forty-year career. Beautifully and concisely written, informative, often humorous, and thoroughly inspiring, a must read for anyone considering a career as a rabbi, temple board members, and those interested in a behind the scenes account of synagogue life. 180 pages, Palmetto Publishing, paperback ($15.95) ebook ($7.95). Available online at Bookshop.org, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

E IGHTEEN WORDS TO SUSTAIN A LIFE : A J EWISH FATHER’S E THICAL WILL

David Patterson

Jewish fathers have long recorded their wisdom for their heirs in what is called an ethical will. This book is the ethical will of a father who has spent a lifetime studying Jewish tradition. It is organized around eighteen words that form the foundations of human life, taken from the Hebrew word for “life,” chai, which is eighteen. Among these words are goodness, gratitude, prayer, love, and others. David Patterson is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award. Available from Wipf and Stock Publishers and Bookshop.org.

THE PRECIOUS FEW

David Twain with Art Twain

While the Nazis round up Polish Jews and herd them to concentration camps, four separate young Jews find ways to escape, adjust, and fight back. The force that drives them is an iron will to survive—against overwhelming odds—to fi nd lost family, refuse to bow to antisemitic force, and to retaliate. Four survivors tell their stories of incredible success in a time rich with failure. Their experiences lead to a new mindset: a breed of Jews who will eventually create a Jewish state dedicated to never letting another Holocaust stain history. These precious few greatly changed Jewish life. The book may be purchased on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

PORTRAIT OF AN A MERICAN R ABBI

Rabbi Lance J Sussman, PhD

From the trauma of 9/11 to the many challenges of COVID, Portrait of an American Rabbi: In His Own Words presents a sweeping account of American Jewish life in the fi rst two decades of the 21st century. Written by a renowned rabbi and historian, this volume skillfully weaves together the headlines of our times, their intensely personal impact on himself, his congregation and the broader Jewish community. A unique blend of genres, Portrait is a rabbinic tour-de-force and scholarly exploration of our times. Available on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

MY TEL AVIV TABLE Limor

Chen

My Tel Aviv Table is a collection of healthy homestyle recipes packed with the flavors and stories of Tel Aviv. In her debut cookbook, Limor shares her wholesome cooking style, one that centers on health and freshness, ensuring that each recipe is packed with flavor and fragrance while remaining light and nourishing. “Limor Chen’s beautiful book bursts with exciting combinations and enticing flavors,” Claudia Roden. Available on Bookshop.org.

N OTES ON THE ART OF LIFE

Haim Shapira

Told in a positive, no-nonsense tone, this is the ultimate tour of philosophers, artists and academics throughout the ages by philosopher Haim Shapira. Notes on the Art of Life is a discursive and intensely personal collection of thoughts on life; a tribute to the importance of the here and now; the value of the moment and of paying attention to it. Available on Bookshop.org.

BESSIE : A N OVEL

Linda Kass

Drawing on biographical and historical sources, Bessie reimagines the early life of Bess Myerson—the musically talented daughter of poor Russian immigrants from the Bronx—who, in the bigoted milieu of 1945, remarkably rises to become Miss America, the first—and to date only—Jewish woman to do so. Hardcover and paperback, available at all retailers, including Bookshop.org. www.lindakass.com

THE HOUSE OF THE R ED SHIELD: A NOVEL OF THE J EWISH E NLIGHTENMENT

Lizzi Wolf

Follow two generations of a Jewish family from the Frankfurt shtetl as they are swept up in the cataclysmic changes brought on by the 18th-century Haskala that shook the rabbinical establishment to its core and challenged the very idea of what it means to be a Jew.

Available on Amazon.

SHTETL TALES

Eleanore Smith

Published by AuthorHouse, Shtetl Tales is a collection of stories which take place in the fi ctional shtetl of Patchentuch, located somewhere in Eastern Poland. The stories tell of the lighthearted adventures and misadventures of town residents such as Schlamazel Lifshutz, and they transcend the grim reality of shtetl life to a more lighthearted place.

All eight volumes available on Amazon and Bookshop.org

THE H ELP OF ANGELS

H.J. Zeger

Before WWII, Benjamin Weiss grows up in a Hungarian town called Beregszász. Shortly after becoming a young man, the German and Hungarian military start their deportation process. When three high-ranking Nazi o cers visit the camp Ben is in (Mauthausen), his fate is thrown into question. The story portrays life in Europe before and throughout the Holocaust, from a most intimate and transcendental perspective.

Available on Bookshop.org, B&N and Amazon.

SUPPORTING HEROES: HOW YAD SARAH HELPED TZIPI REGAIN INDEPENDENCE

We owe everything to heroes like Sergeant Tzipi Ya’akobian, a 21-year veteran of the Jerusalem police force who suffered a vicious terrorist stabbing attack, severing her spinal cord and leaving her paralyzed from the shoulders down. After a year in the hospital, Tzipi was finally able to come home – but how would she manage?

Yad Sarah steps in to help.

We showed Tzipi equipment and accessories she didn’t know existed, like an adjustable bathroom chair. We also demonstrated how to cook with some simple adaptations, practice, and patience. Like any of us, Tzipi was delighted to be home, “I finally had peace. I can't describe to you the happiness I felt when, for the first time in a year, my children came and cuddled with me in the morning.”

Now, Tzipi has hope again: “The sky is the limit."

YAD SARAH IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THOSE WHO DEVOTE THEIR LIVES TO ISRAEL.

Obstacles Explored Here

From stumbling block to sledgehammer |

By Joseph Lowin

What do a short story by nobel laureate s.y. agnon and a by composer and folksinger Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who has a controversial legacy, have in common? They both make creative use of a phrase taken from the Shabbat morning prayers:

(ve-lo nikashel), “And may we not stumble.” Agnon uses this phrase as the title for a brief but weighty tale of a “lapsed” Jewish woman who is miraculously rescued from apostasy and intermarriage by those two words. As for the upbeat Carlebach melody whose refrain features the words ve-lo nikashel, it became an anthem for a generation of Jewish youth who had lost their connection to their heritage, and is still hummed today. Other derivations of the root ל-ש-כ (khaf-shin-lamed), to stumble, fall or fail, are abundant in Jewish life, from national calamity to theatrical flop and from stumbling block to sledgehammer.

A widely discussed text in the Holiness Code, the collection of laws around morality, rituals and Jewish festivals in Leviticus, is

(lifnei ivver lo tittein mikhshol), “One must not place an obstacle before the blind.” For Rashi, our 12th-century exegete par excellence, this biblical injunction is to be applied figuratively: One must not lead a friend astray, Rashi writes, by giving advice not suitable for that person, in that situation.

The Book of Proverbs gives advice in the expression

(be-koshlo al yagel libbekha), “When he [your enemy] fails, your heart should not rejoice.” After the destruction of Jerusalem, Nehemiah exhorts returning Israelites to help rebuild its wall. He also coined a depressing catchphrase using our root, לָבַּסַּה

לַשָׁכּ (kashal ko’akh ha-sabbal), “The burden-laden laborer is worn out.”

Other sources use our root in a variety of ways. Lexicographer Marcus Jastrow records in his Talmudic dictionary that the verb לַשׁכּ (kashal), “to strike against,” leads to the noun ליִשַּׁכּ (kashil), sledgehammer. Even though the Torah tells us not to favor the poor in court rulings, Mishnah Ketubot 9:2 teaches that when there are several claimants to an estate, it should be awarded ןֶהָבֶּשׁ לֵשׁוכַּל (la-koshel she-bahen), “to the most disadvantaged among them.”

Today, לָשְׁכִנ (nikhshal), failed, is found in school settings, particularly if a student doesn’t grasp the subject being taught. At the hospital, someone recuperating from surgery may feel some ַחֹ כּ ןלְשׁכּ (kishlon ko’ah), faintness. At the theater, a critic decries a “flop” with the phrase ץ וּרָח ןלָשּׁכּ (kishalon harutz), total failure. On the highway, a sign may read

לשְׁכִמ

(mikhshol lefanekha), “Obstacle ahead.” And let’s admit it, many a nuisance can be so ליִשְכַמ (makhshil), frustrating, that even an inspirational song or an uplifting story would not help.

Joseph Lowin’s columns for Hadassah Magazine are collected in the books HebrewSpeak, Hebrew Talk and the recently published Hebrew Matters, available at gcrr.org/product-page/hebrew-matters

David Horovitz

‘Sanity must reassert itself’ |

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Influential israeli journalist David Horovitz is deeply worried about the future of his country as the coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presses forward with controversial steps limiting the ability of the Supreme Court to serve as a check on the Knesset’s power. Known as a political centrist, the 61-year-old founder and editor of the online publication, The Times of Israel, who made aliyah from England in 1983, says he is “more concerned than I’ve ever been about the destiny and well-being of this country that I love.” This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What do you think the American Jewish community and government should be doing in response to the Knesset’s moves to regulate Israel’s Supreme Court?

I am loathe to encourage even the most supportive of allies to put Israel in its place. I want us to sober up and would like us to be able to do it without outside pressure. There must be respect for Israel’s independence. Allies should offer us guidance and support. They can convey the sense of what’s at stake. You don’t see the leadership here internalizing what’s at stake to the degree they should—for example, that the tech economy will be harmed.

The “reasonableness” law that passed on July 24 [taking away the Supreme Court’s ability to review or overturn any administrative decision by a minister that the court may deem unreasonable] will have far-reaching impact, more than even its erstwhile supporters were expecting. It is the declared intention to push through much more signifi-

cant shackling of the judiciary. We are potentially in the early stages of a worsening democratic crisis.

Are you worried about Israelis leaving the country because of the proposed judicial overhaul?

I know some people who are thinking of leaving. There are statistics on faltering investment in the tech industry, as much as 65 percent, in the second quarter of 2023 compared to last year. If you are a high-flying tech innovator and can’t fund your company here, you might start thinking about moving elsewhere. We must be concerned that people will leave.

Do you fear that the current Knesset may attempt to curtail press freedom?

There are members of the coalition openly hostile to fair-minded media, and I have concerns about where things might go if the courts are neutered. The potential for con-

cern is significant, and it is deepening. They’ve passed the “reasonableness” legislation despite Israel’s most important ally saying, “You need consensus.” The readiness to do that without the support of a single opposition member or ostensibly more moderate people in Likud is ridiculous. In the future, will they cancel elections in Israel? They are on a path to legislating a way to do that.

What are your observations about the protests?

The protests will not die down. The opposition will grow more intensive. I don’t think international pressure or threats will deter a government not deterred by the harm it’s doing to the country. The situation is becoming volatile. Police have become markedly more aggressive in confronting demonstrators. I hope things do not get much worse, and I worry that they will.

You were 20—an idealistic age— when you made aliyah. How do you feel now about Israel’s future?

It’s not always the easiest place to live, but it is important to live here. This country cannot afford to tear itself apart because the Jewish people need a country where we can determine our own future. I am determinedly long-term optimistic. We can’t not get through this. It’s unthinkable. It would be unforgiveable. Sanity must reassert itself, and the political mainstream must regain control from minor, more extreme parties that currently have power disproportionate to their size.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and essayist. She is also the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant, a how-to guide for creating your daughter’s unique simchat bat.

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Supporting the innovative and life-sustaining work of Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) in medical research and treatment is deeply important to Merry and Richard Slone, which is why they have 1.800.428.8884

The payments you will receive depend on your age and the amount of your gift. Contact us for a personalized example or to learn about ways to include Hadassah in your estate plan.

NEW OPTION! You may be eligible to fund your CGA using your IRA. This option comes with special rules, so contact us to see if you qualify.

*Rates as of Jan. 1, 2023. Rates are fixed when annuity is established. Rates are also available for two-life gift annuities. If you reside in New York, please contact us directly as your rates may vary slightly. Minimum age: 65 | Minimum contribution: $5,000

The information and content contained herein are intended for educational purposes only and are not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to be relied upon. For such advice, please consult an attorney, tax advisor or accountant. References to estate and income taxes include federal taxes only and are subject to change. State income/estate taxes and/or other state laws may impact your results.

The solicitation disclosure on page 56 is incorporated in this advertisement.

Charitable deductions are allowed to the extent provided by law. Hadassah shall have full dominion, control and discretion over your gifts (and shall be under no legal obligation to transfer any portion of a gift to or for the use or benefit of any other entity or organization). All decisions regarding the transfer of funds to or for the benefit of any other entity or organization shall be subject to the approval of the Board or other governing body of Hadassah.

California residents: Annuities are subject to regulation by the State of California. Payments under such agreements, however, are not protected or otherwise guaranteed by any government agency or the California Life and Health Insurance Guarantee Association. Oklahoma residents: A charitable gift annuity is not regulated by the Oklahoma Insurance Department and is not protected by a guaranty association affiliated with the Oklahoma Insurance Department. South Dakota residents: Charitable gift annuities are not regulated by and are not under the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Division of Insurance.

HADASSAH, THE WOMEN’S ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA, INC.

“Hadassah Medical Organization’s cutting-edge research brings hope to people with neurological and other diseases. The Slone Family is proud to support this wonderful endeavor.”

—Merry Slone, Old

Because of you, new discoveries are transforming lives.

Merry and Richard Slone

©2023 Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc., Hadassah, the H logo, and Hadassah the Power of Women Who Do are registered trademarks of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc.

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